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AN 

ENGINEERING    STUDENTS 
NOTES 


Technical,    Philosophical 
and   Otherwise 


BY    J.     RICHARDS 


"  The  true  epic  of  our  time  is  not  arms  and  the  man,  but  tools 
and  the  man,  an  infinitely  wider  kind  of  epic."— Carlyle. 


!  I    T 


ISCO.'^AL. 


SAN  FRANCIS 
INDUSTRIAL  PUBLISHING  COMPANY 

22    CALIFORNIA    STREET 
1904 


Entered  according  to  Act  of  Congress,  by^  JOHN  RICHARDS, 

in  the  Office  of  the  Librarian  of  Congress, 

in  the  year  1901>. 


PREFACE. 


The  subject  matter  that  makes  up  most  of  the  present  book 
was  written  between  the  years  1890  and  1897,  and  published  in  the 
Magazine  "Industry,"  of  which  publication  the  writer  was  the 
editor  during  that  period. 

The  title  assumed  at  that  time  was  "EXTRACTS  FROM  A 
NOTE  BOOK — BY  TECHNO,"  began  and  for  some  time  continued 
as  a  means  of  instructing  students  and  apprentices  in  the  processes 
of  engineering  work  by  a  half-humorous  treatment  that  would 
divest  the  subject  of  its  usual  formal  and  dry  presentment  in 
technical  books. 

The  articles  met  with  much  commendation,  but  it  was  found 
after  five  or  six  chapters  had  been  prepared  that  the  field  was  too 
circumscribed,  and  that  the  "  Extracts "  must  extend  into  the 
outer  world  and  change  their  form,  or  cease.  A  new  scheme  was 
adopted  in  the  sixth  article,  where  the  present  revision  begins, 
omitting,  with  a  few  exceptions,  so  much  as  would  fail  to  have 
interest  for  non-technical  readers. 

J.  R. 
San  Francisco,  July,  1904. 


5357- 


CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

CHAPTER  I  ......  5-11 

Corrugated  Water — Getting  Struck — Steam 
Steering  Gear — A  Case  of  Friction — Sea  Sick- 
ness— The  Copernican  System. 

CHAPTER  II         .        .        ."  .        •  11-15 

Sea  Engines — Essay  on  Boilers — A  Versatile 
Scotchman — How  to  Raise  an  Obelisk — The 
Lost  Arts — Barnacle  Geese. 

CHAPTER  III 15-21 

A  Smell  of  Erin— Up  in  the  Mail— At  Inchi- 
core — Axle  Grease — New  Names — Flattened 
Out — How  to  See  a  Channel  Steamer — A 
Lecture  on  Ireland. 

CHAPTER  IV        ..."...  21-25 

Gang  Awa'  Till  New  York— The  Effect  of 
Two  Turns  a  Minute — British  Locomotives 
— New  London. 

CHAPTER  V 25-29 

Penn  and  Maudslay — London  Penny  Boats 
—Shipbuilding  on  the  Thames— Dry  Loam. 

CHAPTER  VI 29-33 

A  Steam  Hammer  for  Gravity — A  steamboat 
on  a  Hill — Explosives  on  the  Pacific  Coast 
— The  Line  of  Least  Resistance. 

CHAPTER  VII 34-37 

Isle  of  Man— Manx  Cats— Pickled  at  Sea- 
Kippers — Laxa  Water  Wheel — Pears'  Soap. 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER  VIII 


The  Science  of  Wagons — Jams  in  Broadway 
— London  Drivers — Building  Cities. 


CHAPTER  IX 


Docks  at  Millwall — Goths  and  Vandals— A 
Scarcity  of  Soil — A  Hotel  Commander — The 
Curious  Kalkelung — A  Fire  to  Last  Twenty- 
Four  Hours — The  Red  Annex. 


CHAPTER  X 


Swedish  Omnibuses  —  A  Busy  King  Who 
Earns  His  Salary — Horizontal  Sunshine — A 
London  Steamboat  Company  —  Tin-Pot 
Steamers. 


CHAPTER  XI 


On  Draughting  —  Swedish  Methods  —  Euro- 
pean Shop  Practice  —  An  English  Plan  For 
Forging  Sheets — How  to  Draw  a  Dump  Car 
—Swedish  Ink  Pallets— Liibeck  Steamers. 


CHAPTER  XII 


Navigating  in  "a  Meadow — Hanse  Towns — 
Old  Churches  and  Relics  —  An  Irreverent 
View — Old  Coins  and  Cabinet  Ware  —  Hol- 
land and  the  Dutch. 


CHAPTER  XIII 


A  Stubborn  People — Francs  and  Florins — 
Holland  Taken  by  the  Dutch— A  Rational 
Battle — Emigrants  Need  Not  Apply. 


CHAPTER  XIV 


Little  Beige— The  Giant  Antigonus— British 
Fortifications — Mons  Meg — Dog  Traction — 
A  City  Set  on  a  Hill. 


PAGE 
38-41 


42-61 


61-66 


66-71 


71-75 


75-80 


81-96 


CHAPTER  XV 


On  a  Domestic  Tour — Knickerbocker  Dutch 
—The  Member  from  Chatahooga — American 
Railway  Carriages— The  Genesse. 


96-102 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 


CHAPTER  XVI    .        .  .        102-110 

Deacon    Barton — A  Corporation  with  a  Soul 

—  A  Questionable   Mill    Site — Junius  Judson 

—  A     Race     Problem  —  Electric     Towing  — 
Schemes  and  Crimes. 


CHAPTER  XVII 110-117 

La  Salle's  Trip — Napoleon  Annihilated — St. 
Anthony's  Falls — Catching  Pickerel — A  Fishy 
Story — Acclimating  Fruit — Other  Things. 

CHAPTER  XVIII 117-125 

How  a  Steamboat  Finds  Its  Way — The  Tip- 
pecanoe  Estate— General  Harrison  on  Ancient 
Mounds — A  Learned  President— "When  Dead 
How  Soon  We  Are  Forgot." — A  Toboggan 
Feat. 

CHAPTER  XIX 125-132 

Low-Pressure  Steamboat  Engines — Also 
Compound  Engines — An  Old  Water- Works 
Engine — How  Cities  are  Built — The  First  of 
Steam -Moved  Valves — An  Astonishing  Car- 
pet Bag — Cincinnati  as  an  Original  Town. 

CHAPTER  XX 132-138 

A   Monologue   on   the   Mississippi — How   a 
River  Operates— What   a    Million   is— What 
One    Gains     by    Observing — A    Homily    on 
Human  Effort. 

CHAPTER  XXI 138-145 

An  Indian  Massacre — A  Queer  Water  Craft — 
An  Essay  on  "Bilers" — A  Cast-Iron  Doctor. 

CHAPTER  XXII 145-155 

A  Saintly  City— Six  Miles  of  Steamboats— 
A  Fallen  City— A  Top  Drainage  System— A 
Pavement  for  200  Years — Carpet  Baggers — 
River  Pirates — A  Bridge  22  Miles  Long — On 
Flat  Boats. 


CONTENTS 

AGE 

CHAPTER  XXIII 156-161 

A  Pitch-Pine  Country — A  Screed  on  Slavery 
— How  to  Set  a  Telegraph  Pole — Boring  Out 
a  Fly  Wheel — How  to  Settle  a  New  Country 
— Pacific  Coast. 

CHAPTER  XXIV 162-168 

On  the  Pacific  Coast  —  Talking  Svensk — 
Moving  a  Country — Canadian  Pacific — Van- 
couver— How  Climates  are  Made. 

CHAPTER  XXV 169-175 

A  Cracked  Country — Imaginative  History — 
A  Storm  Factory — European  Dress — A  Mis- 
take in  Hops — The  Normal  Line. 

CHAPTER  XXVI 176-182 

Machine  Tool  Makers — Flexible  Drilling 
Machines  —  Grindstone  Frames  —  Balancing 
Mandrels — An  Idea  In  Salt  Cellars. 

CHAPTER  XXVII 182-188 

Brahmanism — A  High  Country — Something 
About  Miracles — Hypnotism — A  Novel  Type 
of  Steamboats — Improving  a  River. 

CHAPTER  XXVIII 188-201 

Population  Wanted— The  Lead  Pipe  Cinch- 
Pioneering — A  New-Made  Country — A  Man 
From  Bolivar. 


AN  ENGINEERING  STUDENT'S  NOTES, 


CHAPTER   I. 

CORRUGATED    WATER GETTING    STRUCK STEAM     STEERING 

GEAR — A    CASE    OF    FRICTION — SEA    SICKNESS — 
THE    COPERNICAN   SYSTEM. 

— The  writer,  an  ' '  Improver  "  in  an  Engin- 


eering Office  and  Works,  had  for  a  number  of  years  been 
climbing  with  commendable  effort  the  long  ladder  that 
leads  up  to  an  evanishing  proficiency  in  an  art  that  has 
no  ending.  His  eyesight,  digestion  and  spinal  stability 
had  to  an  extent  been  sacrificed  on  the  altar  of  effort, 
when  he  discovered  that  no  art  or  profession  is  worth 
much  if  learned  in  the  * '  abstract, ' '  and  that  really  useful 
knowledge  of  anything  must  include  the  "concrete." 

We  are  at  this  day  continually  reminded  that  knowl- 
edge of  the  applied  arts  must  be  specialized,  which  is 
true  if  we  consider  men  as  machines,  and  in  modern 
practice  a  great  share  of  them  have  to  be  so  considered 
and  employed,  but  another  portion  must  be  more  than 
this.  They  must  be  thinking  factors,  comparing  and 
analyzing  all  around  their  immediate  work,  otherwise 
there  can  be  but  little  progress  made. 

This  was  to  me  an  agreeable  revelation,  accepted  at 
once  at  full  value,  and  fortunately  circumstances  per- 
mitted an  experiment  which  furnishes  subject  matter 
for  these  notes. 


NOTES     BY     A     STUDENT. 


— An  uncle  of  mine,  a  marine  engineer,  an 
eccentric  but  able  man  in  his  calling,  and  in  many  other 
ways  as  will  appear,  sent  word  that  he  was  to  "stop 
ashore"  for  some  months,  and  invited  me  to  "go  over" 
with  him  on  the  next  trip  out  and  have  a  ' '  look  around. ' ' 

The  "over"  meant  to  cross  the  Atlantic  Ocean  and 
the  "look  around,"  I  inferred  from  his  letter,  meant  a 
trip  around  work  shops,  ship  yards,  and  so  on,  in  Europe. 
My  delight  at  this  may  be  imagined. 

My  uncle  is  a  salt  water  engineer,  commonly  taciturn 
and  positive,  with  a  good  deal  of  eccentricity  in  his  make- 
up— a  mechanical  agnostic,  in  so  far  as  new  inventions; 
certain  of  his  opinions  which  embrace  a  world  of  subjects, 
and  detests  argument. 

I  got  leave  of  absence,  and  after  a  week  of  events  that 
have  no  interest  here,  I  found  myself  on  a  North  At- 
lantic "liner"  with  my  uncle,  who  went  out  as  a  passen- 
ger to,  as  he  said,  "see  how  it  felt." 

After  twenty-four  hours  out  things  settled  down  and 
I  hunted  up  my  note  book,  and  here  is  my  first  entry : 

—In  the  smoking-room  last  night,  where 
my  uncle  spends  most  of  his  time,  he  was  asked  how  high 
sea  waves  rose  in  a  storm.  "Don't  rise  at  all,"  said  he, 
"A  landsman's  idea.  They  are  blown  off.  People  think 
waves  are  made  like  corrugated  iron  to  a  regular  pitch. 
Best  description  I  ever  heard  was  from  a  child  who  said 
in  time  of  a  storm,  'the  sea  is  all  torn  up.'  In  a  gale  of 
wind  there  is  some  regularity  of  waves ;  in  a  storm, 
none.  You  may  be  'struck'  once  an  hour,  onco  a  day. 
or  not  at  all.  Next,  you  will  ask:  What  is  being 
'struck'?  I  anticipate  you  and  say  I  do  not  know.  Rail- 
ings, davits,  boats  and  deck  houses  gone.  That's  being 


NOTES    BY     A     STUDENT. 


'struck.'    Better  learn  it  by  precept  if  you  can,  the  ex- 
ample is  not  attractive." 

—I  blundered  on  the  steam  steering  gearing 
today,  in  an  iron  house  on  the  main  deck,  and  found 
enough  to  make  a  note  of.  The  Mechanical  Professor 
gave  us  quite  a  lecture  on  this  subject  one  time,  but  then 
we  scarcely  knew  what  steering  meant,  or  whether  it 
required  ten  pounds  or  a  thousand  to  move  the  rudder; 
it  wa^  then  difficult  to  understand  much  about  steam 
steering,  but  I  am  at  the  "bottom  of  it  now." 

One  thing  I  do  not  understand  and  can  get  no  light 
upon  is  this :  If  a  ship  is  lying  still  and  the  extreme  of 
the  rudder  is  fastened  to  some  stationary  object  it  re- 
quires five  times  as  much  force  to  swing  the  ship  as  it 
would  if  she  were  under  way.  The  movement  through 
the  water  has  to  do  with  this. 

The  Professor  explained,  and  showed  us  at  college, 
how  a  close-fitting  shaft,  while  being  passed  through  a 
hole,  could  be  turned  with  the  hands  while  it  was  moving 
endwise,  but  could  not  be  budged  with  a  lever  if  the  end 
movement  ceased.  It  seems  to  be  the  same  way  in  steer- 
ing a  ship  or  boat,  but  I  am  forgetting  the  steam  gear. 

There  are  a  great  many  modifications,  but  only  two 
types,  so  far  as  I  can  find  out.  One,  wherein  there  are 
a  pair  of  small  engines  connected  at  right  angles  and  the 
eccentrics  turned  by  the  small  steering  wheel.  Of  course, 
the  engines  follow  the  eccentrics,  whether  they  may  be 
turned  right  or  left,  so  the  labor  on  the  wheel  is  no  more 
than  moving  the  valves,  but  even  this  is  too  much  for  our 
day,  and  the  whole  is  steam  controlled  on  large  ships; 
the  "wheel"  has  only  to  indicate.  The  reversing  is 
done  by  changing  the  induction  to  the  exhaust,  and  the 


8  NOTES    BY    A    STUDENT. 

degree  of  movement  is  regulated  by  an  ' '  overtake ' '  valve, 
that  follows  up  and  closes  at  any  point. 

This  may  be  clear,  but  I  doubt  it;  however  any  one 
who  wants  to  know  more  can  use  this  as  a  clue  and  look 
the  matter  up  for  themselves.  Our  steering  gearing  is  of 
the  old  simple  kind,  the  tiller  wheel  connected  to  the 
eccentrics;  anybody  can  understand  that. 

Some  remarks  of  my  uncle  last  evening, 

"anent"  friction,  as  Tweed,  the  Scotchman,  would  say, 
called  to  mind  a  little  experience  of  my  own  that  will 
do  for  a  note  here. 

When  out  on  the  Pacific  Coast,  some  time  ago,  I  made 
frequent  trips  on  a  particularly  nice  steamboat  called  the 
San  Rafael.  She  was  built  on  the  model  of  the  old 
Staten  Island  boats  at  New  York,  before  the  present  huge 
boats  were  put  on,  and  was  a  clean  cut  specimen  of  the 
best  beam  engine  practice.  She  steamed  at  the  rate  of 
fourteen  to  sixteen  miles  an  hour2  in  regular  service,  on 
her  seven  mile  runs. 

Mr.  Jones,  the  engineer,  an  old  North  River  man,  is  an 
adept  on  beam  engines,  who  more  than  anyone  else  I 
have  ever  met  understands  the  "genesis,"  "thesis,"  and 
all  besides  of  this  type  of  "steam  machines. "  I  was  in 
his  engine  room  one  day,  just  as  we  were  to  leave  a  land- 
ing, when  he  glanced  at  the  indicator  and  saw  the  engine 
•was  dead  on  the  center ! 

Mr.  Jones  called  down  to  the  fire  room,  "Tom,  come 
up  and  turn  the  wheel  off  the  center."  I  watched  for 
Tom  expecting  to  see  him  emerge  with  a  hydraulic  jack, 
a  set  of  chain  tackle,  or  at  least  a  pinch  bar,  but  he  had 
nothing  of  the  kind.  He  walked  over  to  the  port  wheel, 
opened  a  door,  set  one  foot  on  a  float,  caught  one  above 
with  his  hand,  and  turned  that  800  horse  power  engine 


NOTES     BY     A     STUDENT. 


10  degrees  with  not  more  than  160  pounds  weight  on  the 
wheel.  I  never  was  so  much  astonished  in  my  life,  and 
expect  the  reader  to  be  the  same — but  it  is  true.  It  is  a 
pretty  tough  story,  but  can  be  demonstrated  at  any  time 
by  going  out  to  San  Francisco,  and  it  is  well  worth  a 
journey  there  to  see  it,  if  there  are  no  examples  nearer 
home. 

"You  see2"  said  Mr.  Jones,  "this  keying  up,  setting 
out  springs  and  general  tension  on  things  is  a  humbug. 
A  skilled  man  keeps  his  engine  slack  and  at  the  same 
time  without  play.  Why  that  piston  is  as  tight  as  a  cork 
in  a  bottle  and  still  is  hanging  loose  in  the  cylinder.  I 
have  two  springs  opposite  the  steam  ports  blocked  with 
wood  to  keep  the  inrush  of  the  steam  from  pushing  the 
piston  over  to  the  other  side.  I  can  open  one  of  those 
exhaust  valves  and  that  vacuum  will  stand  there  for 
half  an  hour ! ' ' 

I  am  going  to  read  this  note  to  my  uncle,  and  write 
some  of  his  remarks,  unless  they  are  too  explosive  for  this 
modest  collection  of  notes. 

— I  have  escaped  sea-sickness,  and  had  the 
pleasure  of  listening  to  a  lecture  on  this  subject  by  my 
uncle,  delivered  last  evening  in  the  smoking-room,  in 
substance  thus:  "Sea-sickness  is  a  mental  malady,  in  a 
sense;  that  is,  it  can  be  cured  mentally.  I  have  seen  a 
whole  mess  of  sea-sick  persons  cured  in  one  minute  by  an 
alarm  of  fire.  Sometimes  ladies  are  cured  by  a  steward 
spilling  the  soup  in  their  laps.  I  have  several  times  seen 
people  fall  over  the  rail  when  'heaving  up'  and  when  we 
fished  them  out  of  the  water  no  trace  of  the  complaint 
remained.  It  is  no  laughing  matter  though — not  in  any 
sense. 


10  NOTES    BY    A     STUDENT. 

' '  The  claim  that  it  is  good  for  general  health  is  a  hum- 
bug— a  gross  humbug.  An  emetic  is  a  good  thing  in 
this  time  of  ours  when  everyone  eats  like  a  cormorant, 
and  that  far  sea-sickness  may  do  some  good.  Prevent  it, 
you  say !  Well,  in  the  first  place,  have  nothing  to  do  with 
doctors  or  their  nostrums.  Sea-sickness  is  not  always 
alike,  but  generally  begins  with  acidity  of  the  stomach, 
and  this  acidity  is  the  result,  usually,  of  one  of  two 
factors  or  both,  liquids  and  grease.  When  ill,  lie  on  your 
back  fore  and  aft  ship,  and  swallow  broken  ice,  slowly.  I 
don 't  mean  at  first,  but  after  a  few  hours  when  the  stom- 
ach is  sure  to  be  inflamed  and  hot,  while  your  hands 
and  feet  will  be  cold.  When  you  get  the  boiler,  I  mean 
stomach,  cooled  off  and  empty,  well  seasoned  beef  tea, 
broth,  and  if  you  can  get  it,  cream,  are  suitable  things 
to  fill  up  on.  The  only  medicine  you  need  is  some  alka- 
line to  correct  acidity,  calcined  magnesia  is  best.  For 
solid  diet  fat  pork  or  old  cheese" — just  here  several 
pale-looking  pessengers  made  for  the  door,  and  my 
uncle  lit  his  pipe. 

— I  never  got  a  clear  conception  of  the 
"Copernican  system"  until  last  night.  We  have  no 
clear  air  on  land.  At  sea  on  a  clear  night  you  gaze  into 
the  firmament  and  see  the  planets  as  spheres,  see  how 
they  are  set  in  space.  The  impression  is  wonderful.  You 
may  have  a  "belief"  in  the  truths  of  astronomy.  A 
clear  night  at  sea  gives  you  ' '  conviction ' '  of  these  truths. 
You  are  skimming  along  on  the  sea  with  five-eighths  of 
an  inch  between  you  and  eternity;  driven  by  what  an 
hour  ago  seemed  the  most  wonderful  of  inventions.  Now, 
gazing  into  the  mass  of  whirling  worlds,  each  moving 
in  rythm  of  course  and  time,  this  trifling  little  contriv- 
ance of  man — a  steamship — is  but  an  insignificant  atom 


NOTES     BY     A     STUDENT.  11 

in  this  vast  machinery  of  the  Universe.     This  note  will 
run  into  poetry  if  not  stopped  here. 


CHAPTER    II. 

SEA    ENGINES ESSAY    ON    BOILERS A    VERSATILE    SCOTCH- 
MAN  HOW    TO    RAISE    AN    OBELISK THE    LOST 

ARTS BARNACLE   GEESE. 


—The  engines,  simple  compound,  go  on 
forever.  The  chief,  who  my  uncle  knows,  has  taken  an 
interest  in  me  and  "chalked  my  coat,"  that  is,  given  me 
a  pass  down  below.  Sixty  revolutions  per  minute  of  60 
inches  stroke,  is  600  feet  of  piston  speed.  A  surface 
speed  on  the  crank-pins  of  300  feet  a  minute  and  no 
stopping  to  key  up,  for  any  cause.  Six  hundred  thou- 
sand turns  between  ports.  Seven  days  at  600  feet  per 
minute  of  piston  speed!  Just  think  of  going  to  a  land 
engineer  with  his  machinery  fixed  to  immovable  founda- 
tions, and  ask  him  to  run  an  engine  of  8,000  horse  power 
for  seven  days  without  slowing  for  a  stroke ;  not  for  once, 
but  for  scores  of  times  and  continually.  He  could  not 
do  it,  at  least  don't  do  it.  Nor  can  he  feed  such  an  en- 
gine with  less  than  two  pounds  of  coal  per  horse  power 
per  hour,  as  they  do  here.  My  uncle  says:  "Land  en- 
gines, my  boy,  are  not  made  like  these.  They  have 
neither  the  workmanship,  nor  material,  neither  have 
they  the  care.  Here  are  hundreds  of  engines  in  '  similar 
use.'  Competition,  emulation  and  guarantee  are  all 
wanting,  or  nearly  so,  in  land  engines.  These  are  not 
'rattle  trap'  machines  with  a  score  or  more  of  pin  joints 
to  work  the  valves.  Imagine  a  Corliss  or  Proel  rig  on 
one  of  those  engines.  The  whole  thing  would  go  to 


12  NOTES     BY     A     STUDENT. 

'smithereens'  in  a  month,  or  at  least  want  to.  Mr.  Jor- 
dan, of  the  Guion  Line,  tried  Corliss  valves  and  failed. 
The  clatter  and  roar  of  the  engine  room  reminded  one 
of  a  shot  separator.  Jordan  tried  a  good  many  things; 
built  the  Montana  and  Dakota  with  water  tube  boilers, 
busted  the  company  and  quit.  Go  down  into  the  engine 
room  and  count  up  the  joints  and  pieces.  Then  count 
up  a  land  engine's  pieces  and  compare.  The  great 
science  of  construction  is  to  'leave  out  pieces.'  Marine 
engineers  leave  out  pieces,  land  engineers  hunt  places  to 
add  them.  It  is  seven  bells.  Time  to  turn  in. ' ' 

— Next  morning  I  found  my  uncle  in  a 
talkative  mood — that  is;  for  him,  and  tackled  him  on 
boilers.  "Boilers,"  said  he,  "are  seen  at  sea.  On  land 
you  have  kettles  set  in  brick  and  burn  five  pounds  of 
coal  to  a  horse  power.  The  place  to  fire  a  boiler  is  in  the 
boiler,  not  alongside.  You  must  give  up  this  idea  of  out- 
side firing  for  a  time.  You  will  see  but  little  of  it  in 
Europe.  I  have  had  little  to  do  with  bricked-up  boilers 
and  want  less  in  future.  A  man  who  wants  a  good  boiler 
must  pay  for  it ;  must  have  enough  boiler  to  give  heating 
surface  inside,  not  on  the  outer  shell.  These  outside 
boilers  are  an  expedient  of  cheapness,  so  also  are  all  the 
tribe  of  sectional,  water  tube,  and  all  the  rest.  Boiler 
makers  must  supply  what  people  want,  so  they  are  not 
to  blame.  A  boiler  maker  must  not  learn  too  much.  It 
makes  him  unhappy.  He  cannot  carry  out  his  ideas  in 
land  boilers.  •  High  pressure  may,  and  has  modified  prac- 
tice, but  if  I  had  my  way  I  would  establish  by  code  two 
types  of  boilers — one  marine  and  one  for  land,  and  hang 
every  man  who  departed  from  them.  Experiments  in 
boilers  have  cost  enough  to  pay  the  national  debt  of 
Russia,  and  what  is  the  result  ?  '  Except  as  to  sustaining 


NOTES    BY    A     STUDENT.  13 


higher  pressures,  a  boiler  of  forty  years  ago  is  just  as 
good  as  one  now — perhaps  better." 

—There  is  a.  bristly  old  Scotchman  among 
our  passengers  who  seldom  says  anything,  but  when  he 
does  "open  out,"  as  old  Keyway  used  to  call  it,  there 
generally  is  some  fun.  He  seems  to  smoke  nearly  all  the 
time  seldom  reads,  and  how  he  ever  gathered  up  the 
"=tock  of  information  he  has,  is  a  wonder  of  the  sixth 
power.  He  is  a  walking,  or  rather  a  smoking  encyclo- 
poedia  of  the  "science  of  things  in  general,"  or  as  the 
Professor  used  to  say,  of  Gemeinlichwissenschaft. 

To-day  we  had  in  the  smoking-room  a  harangue  from 
one  of  those  lunatics  who  conceive  that  the  ancients  knew 
all  and  more  than  we  do  at  this  day2  and  that  their  arts 
have  been  lost.  "The  lost  arts,"  he  kept  repeating, 
while  old  Tweed,  the  Scotchman,  was  watching  him  and 
puffing.  "The  great  pyramids,"  said  the  lecturer, 
"could  not  be  reared  in  our  time.  The  mighty  agencies 
then  brought  to  bear  have  passed  away — have  been  lost." 

Tweed  broke  out  upon  him  thus:  "Are  you  an 
engineer,  sir?  No?  Then  how  the  deuce  do  you  know 
the  pyramids  could  not  be  built  now?  Who  told  you  so, 
and  how  could  you  know  it  was  true  if  somebody  did 
tell  you  so  ?  A  countryman  of  mine,  you  may  have  heard 
of,  Mr.  Raiikine,  says,  450  tons  of  coal  would  lift  and 
place  all  the  stones  in  the  pyramids  of  Egypt.  He  knew 
this,  and  you  don't  know  anything  about  it,  and  can't, 
because  you  have  no  knowledge  of  the  science  of  the  mat- 
ter. In  1856,  Fontana,  one  of  your  old  time  engineers, 
raised  an  obelisk  in  Rome  with  40  capstans,  worked  by 
960  men  and  75  horses.  In  1878,  Mr.  Dixon  raised  Cleo- 
patra's Needle,  in  London,  with  four  hydraulic  lifting 
jacks,  worked  by  four  men. 


14  NOTES    BY    A     STUDENT. 

"You  are  like  a  Mr.  Wendel  Phillips,  who  used  to  go 
around  lecturing  on  the  'Lost  Arts' — making  Damascus 
steel  and  the  like — when  he  knew  no  more  of  the  Arts 
than — you  do.  My  friend,  confine  yourself  to  pure 
science;  the  nebulae  of  the  planets,  prehistoric  man  and 
barnacle  geese,  but  don 't  fool  with  arts  that  are  computa- 
ble, or  anything  that  comes  within  the  field  of  mathema- 
tics, unless  you  want  to  make  an  ass  of  yourself."  We 
cheered  the  Scotchman,  and  I  went  off  to  hunt  up  my 
uncle  to  see  what  Tweed  meant  by  "barnacle  geese." 

He  laughed  and  said,  l '  Some  one  has  been  chaffing 
you. ' '  He  had  never  heard  of  this  kind  of  fowl,  but  next 
day,  much  to  my  comfort,  some  one  asked  Tweed  what 
he  meant  by  "barnacle  geese." 

Here  is  his  answer  in  *  *  English. ' '  I  wish  I  could  give 
it  in  his  vernacular,  but  I  might  as  well  try  to  write  in 
Sanskrit. 

— ' '  Barnacle  geese !  I  don 't  wonder  you 
inquire.  Accounts  of  these  are  written  mostly  in  Latin. 
Did  you  ever  see  a  barnacle  ?  Most  people  think  they  are 
a  little  shellfish  the  size  of  a  pea,  and  so  they  may  be, 
but  they  are  also  as  big  as  my  thumb,  sometimes ;  housed 
in  an  open  end  shell?  and  have  a  beak  that  looks  like  the 
bill  of  a  bird.  This  is  where  the  myth  began — the  myth 
of  'barnacle  geese,'  that  lasted  400  years. 

"These  geese  grew  on  trees  over  the  water,  or  where 
the  water  touched  the  branches;  they  came  out  like  a 
blossom.  When  they  were  old  enough  they  dropped  off 
into  the  water  and  swam  away — what  are  you  laughing 
at? 

"There  are  long  essays  in  Latin  on  the  nature  and 
habits  of  these  geese,  and  drawings  too,  showing  them 
in  different  stages  of  their  growth.  They  had  some 


NOTES     BY     A     STUDENT.  15 

peculiar  mark  that  distinguished  them,  and  they  brought 
a  high  price  in  the  markets  of  the  Latin  cities,  as  I  said, 
for  four  centuries. 

"Now  we  come  to  the  point.  The  priests  and  the  rich 
did  not  want  to  do  without  animal  food  during  Lent. 
They  longed  for  the  'flesh-pots,'  and  ate  for  the  time 
'barnacle  geese,'  which  were  a  'vegetable  product,'  that 
grew  on  trees.  Such  a  myth  would  have  disgraced  the 
Maoris,  or  Hottentots.  It  was  reserved  for  our  imme- 
diate ancestors." 

I  would  have  been  shocked  at  Tweed's  remark  about 
our  ancestors  if  I  had  not  just  been  reading  some  of 
Aristotle's  Philosophy,  and  also  a  little  before,  Dr. 
Draper's  critique  of  Lord  Bacon's  writings  on  the  same 
subject.  Barnacle  geese  are  not  so  much  of  a  "stretch" 
after  all,  but  it  is  humiliating  just  the  same,  and  per- 
haps a  wholesome  lesson  for  the  student. 


CHAPTER   III. 

A     SMELL     OF     ERIN UP     IN     THE     MAIL AT     INCHICORE— 

AXLE    GREASE NEW    NAMES FLATTENED    OUT — 

HOW     TO     SEE     A     CHANNEL     STEAMER — 
A  LECTURE  ON  IRELAND. 


—We  are  now  nearing  the  land.  This  fact 
is  emphasized  by  the  "smell  of  turf,"  as  Tweed  calls  it, 
Whether  it  is  turf  or  not  I  do  not  know,  but  certainly 
there  is  a  scent  of  burning  hay  or  grass  away  out  here, 
sixty  miles  from  land.  Every  one  is  on  the  qui  vive; 
there  are  four  hours  more  to  Queenstown  where  my 
uncle  says  we  are  to  go  ashore.  The  lies  are  growing 
thicker  as  we  round  the  Irish  Coast.  The  man  from 


16  NOTES     BY    A     STUDENT. 

Wisconsin  is  informed  that  the  Martello  Towers  are  re- 
mains of  ancient  Celtic  castles.  A  lady  near  by  learns 
these  strange  little  structures  are  where  the  Druids 
offered  up  human  sacrifices,  and  much  more  of  the  kind. 

We  stop,  not  at  Queenstown,  but  miles  outside,  and  go 
ashore  in  a  paddle-wheel  tug,  then  go  into  a  train,  and 
in  an  hour  are  landed  at  a  curious  old  hotel  in  Cork. 
How  we  got  here  and  disposed  of  I  do  not  know.  My 
uncle  is  at  home  with  everything,  just  as  he  would  be  in 
his  engine  room,  no  one  takes  him  for  a  stranger.  He 
gets  what  he  wants  with  a  sign  or  nod,  fees  are  paid  in 
silence,  without  dispute,  and  even  the  peddlers  at  Queens- 
town  passed  him  by.  I  am  in  a  maze  but  will  "get  on" 
by  keeping  a  "close  throttle,"  as  my  uncle  says. 

I  verily  believe  that  if  set  down  in  this  inn  and  left  to 
my  own  resources,  I  would  never  have  got  anything  to  eat 
or  drink,  or  even  a  place  to  sleep.  The  language,  names, 
and  customs  are  all  mysteries  to  me.  We  "go  up  in  the 
mail"  to-morrow,  which  means  we  are  going  to  Dublin 
by  the  express  train.  My  uncle  has  some  business  there, 
or  at  Inchicore,  which  is  a  suburb  of  Dublin,  and  prom- 
ises me  my  first  glimpse  into  a  British  machine  shop. 
—I  skip  over  the  incidents  of  my  trip  on 
the  Great  Southern  and  Western  Eailway  of  Ireland, 
because  I  propose  at  some  future  time  or  place,  in  these 
notes,  to  describe  railway  travel  in  Europe,  and  from 
this,  the  first  taste  of  it,  I  imagine  there  will  be  no  lack 
of  material. 

On  the  way  up  from  Cork  my  uncle  in  reply  to  some 
questions  of  mine  finally  broke  out  in  a  monologue  us 
follows:  "You  are  just  like  all  Americans,  and  nearly 
all  other  people  for  that  matter.  What  you  know  or 
imagine  respecting  Ireland  comes  from  the  pictures  of 


NOTES     BY     A     STUDENT.  17 

Paddy  and  his  pig,  and  from  peasant  immigrants.  Soon 
we  will  pass  at  Newry  the  first  electric  railway  made 
in  the  United  Kingdom.  It  is  driven  by  water  power 
and  at  the  other  end  of  this  road  seven  miles  away  is  the 
most  orderly  city  in  any  English  speaking  land,  Amer- 
ica included.  There  is  no  whiskey,  no  acting  peace  offi- 
cers even,  and  it  stands  at  the  top  in  what  we  are 
pleased  to  call  civilization.  At  Dublin  you  will  see  the 
best  conducted  locomotive  works  in  Britain;  at  Belfast, 
the  best  ship  yard  and  stationery  works.  Irishmen 
command  the  army,  are  leaders  at  the  bar,  and  Lord 
knows  how  many  other  things.  The  people  are  an 
anomaly,  a  mixture  of  the  best  and  the  worst,  with  no 
clue  to  lines  of  distinction.  Keep  your  eyes  open,  also 
your  ears,  for  in  two  hours  more  you  will  hear  for  the 
first  time  the  true  English  language  spoken. 

We  are  now  at  Inchicore.  My  uncle  is  in  the  offices, 
arid  I  in  charge  of  a  "dark"  looking  through  the 
works.  At  first  I  was  astonished  to  see  what  seemed 
a  precise  counterpart  to  one  of  our  own  works  at  home, 
and  in  a  short  time  was  astonished  at  the  differences. 
This  seems  a  little  Irish,  as  a  proposition,  but  it  is  true. 
To  begin  with  I  never  before  saw  a  railway  shop  in  such 
order,  so  clean  and  neat;  a  place  for  everything  and 
everything  in  its  place.  The  men  looked  intelligent,  and 
were  certainly  so.  They  worked  quietly  and  methodi- 
cally, and  it  was  easy  to  see  they  were  masters  of  their 
trade. 

The  amount  of  wrought  iron  parts  was  astonishing, 
scarcely  a  casting  to  be  seen ;  the  forging  was  of  a  class 
I  had  never  seen  before,  and  a  result  of  methods  to  be 
explained  presently. 


18  NOTES     BY     A     STUDENT. 

The  first  thing  to  impress  me  was  the  chips,  or  shav- 
ings rather,  because  nearly  all  cutting  was  done  with 
water  and  the  shavings  curled  off  in  long  pieces.  The 
speed  was  slow,  but  the  cuts  were  enormous.  For  short 
pieces,  bolts  and  the  like,  slide-rests  were  moved  by 
hand,  and  great  shavings  were  peeled  off  at  a  rate  that 
was  never  dreamed  of  at  our  little  college  laboratory. 
The  sections  were  heavier  for  everything,  or  seemed  so. 
The  pieces  in  the  lathes  seemed  to  be  in  no  case  more 
than  five  diameters  in  length.  In  planing  it  was  the 
same.  The  machines  looked  to  me  awkward  but  strong. 
There  was  no  effort  to  "gig  back"  a  carriage  at  a  rate 
of  75  feet  per  minute,  but  this  was  more  than  made  up 
as  it  went  ahead.  Nearly  all  tools  were  of  the  spring 
type,  and  the  cutting — well,  they  simply  took  off  what- 
ever was  in  the  way.  The  massive  frames  of  tools  recalls 
some  writing  on  the  subject,  read  years  ago.  What  it 
is  I  do  not  know,  that  causes  a  peculiar  action  in  any 
tool  with  a  massive  frame  and  supports,  drilling  machines 
excepted. 

In  passing  around  we  came  upon  a  large  tank  contain- 
ing at  least  a  ton  of  yellow  grease.  It  looked  good 
enough  to  eat.  "That  is  axle  grease,"  said  my  guide. 
"It  is  nearly  equal  parts  of  palm  oil,  and  tallow,  and  a 
sixth  part  or  so  of  soda.  The  railways  here  mix  up  their 
own  'grease'  and  call  it  by  its  true  name,  varying  its 
hardness  to  suit  the  season. ' '  There  is  no  use  in  trying  to 
crowd  in  here  one  tenth  of  my  notes,  and  I  must  have 
room  for  the  "smithy,"  of  which,  next. 

Here  everything  seems  to  be  made  in  dies,  even  weld- 
ing is  done  that  way.  Two  blocks  of  cast  iron  fit  to- 
gether, a  matrix  or  form  being  cut  or  cast  into  their  faces. 
These  dies  are  joined  in  most  cases  by  a  bow  frame  of 


NOTES     BY     A     STUDENT.  19 

steel  that  springs  enough  to  allow  them  to  open  and  shut 
but  keeps  them  in  position  to  match.  The  blanks  are  put 
into  these  dies,  and  they  are  pushed  under  one  of  the 
large  steam  hammers  that  comes  down  with  a  crash,  and 
the  metal  is  moulded  into  form  like  putty.  The  fin,  that 
represents  the  surplus,  is  trimmed  off  and  the  job  is  done. 
I  am  told  there  is  nowhere  else  in  the  country  where  this 
method  is  so  extensively  employed  as  at  Inchicore,  and 
one  may  well  believe  it. 

We  visited  the  workingmen  's  dining  rooms  and  stores, 
belonging  to  and  managed  by  themselves,  were  told  how 
medical  attendance  was  provided;  how  their  food  and  all 
supplies  were  obtained  at  wholesale  prices,  with  a  hun- 
dred other  things  and  all  of  them  new,  and  this  in 
Ireland ! 

—In  the  evening  my  uncle  gave  me  a  lesson 
on  technical  terms  of  which  I  make  note.  "Tech,"  said 
he,  "mind  what  you  call  things  here.  It  don't  matter 
much,  but  what  is  the  use  of  being  provincial,  besides  you 
will  find  the  names  here,  when  they  differ  from  yours, 
are  more  relevant.  The  railroads,  as  you  call  them,  are 
railways  here,  and  certainly  they  are  not  'roads'  any- 
where. A  road  is  a  different  thing.  Then,  'car'  is  not 
used,  that  is  a  contraction  of  carriage,  and  slangy,  as 
all  contractions  are.  'Freight'  they  call  'goods.'  You 
can  freight  a  ship  or  a  train  with  goods,  but  the  goods 
are  not  called  freight.  A  'depot'  is  a  place  of  storing  or 
deposit,  and  has  nothing  to  do  with  a  'station'  where 
passenger  traffic  is  carried  on.  The  name  is  not  used 
here  at  all  in  connection  with  railways.  Never  say 
'track'  for  the  permanent  way.  It  is  convenient  and 
short,  but  belongs  elsewhere.  It  don't  mean  two  iron 
rails  laid  on  sleepers,  but  a  mark  or  print  of  some- 


20  NOTES    BY    A     STUDENT. 

thing  that  has  passed.  'Baggage'  is  luggage,  why  i 
don't  know  or  don't  care,  one  is  as  good  as  another  and 
both  absurd.  'Booking'  is  buying  a  ticket.  We  don't 
use  the  term  in  America,  but  have  one  in  its  place,  'buy 
a  ticket'  is  its  equivalent,  but  we  do  nothing  of  the 
kind,  we  buy  transportation. 

"That  will  do  for  railway  matters,  except  one  general 
hint,  which  is2  don't  imagine  what  you  have  heretofore 
seen  at  home  is  correct,  and  all  that  differs  from  that 
is  wrong  in  proportion.  With  that  idea  you  are  no 
traveler,  and  your  time  and  passage  money  will  be 
wasted.  Just  now  you  are  an  Englishman  by  courtesy, 
endowed  with  all  their  rights  and  privileges,  and  you 
should  certainly  concede  them  the  privilege  of  knowing 
their  own  language,  the  one  we  call  by  that  name." 

— From  a  fine  hotel  in  Sackville  Street  we 
went  down,  late  at  night,  to  go  over  to  England  in  the 
mail  steamer,  a  rakish  looking  boat  with  paddle  wheels. 
I  descended  some  water  stairs  at  the  end  of  the  dock  and 
got  a  look  at  her  bow.  It  looked  like  the  point  of  a 
dagger.  When  the  mail  came  in  from  Queenstown,  we 
left.  Such  a  celerity  of  handling,  getting  ready,  and 
getting  away  I  never  before  saw  or  imagined.  In  a 
minute's  time  from  "let  go"  we  were  moving  rapidly 
out  of  the  dock,  and  I  noticed  everyone  making  for 
below.  My  uncle  passed  me  on  his  way  down,  and  said 
with  a  peculiar  smile,  "Tech,  keep  hold  of  something, 
she  may  dive." 

I  was  holding  to  a  chimney  stay.  An  old  "salt"  in 
water  proofs  said  "better  go  below,  sir."  I  had  no 
notion  of  the  kind.  For  years  I  had  been  reading  of 
these  very  boats  that  get  fined  about  five  dollars  a  min- 
ute for  not  coming  in  on  time.  Here  was  a  chance  to 


NOTES     BY     A     STUDENT.  21 

see  the  fun ;  go  below,  not  I.  The  first  thing  noticed  was 
that  the  steamer  did  not  "pitch,"  although  going  across 
the  seas.  She  kept  right  on  a  level  course,  shot  through 
wave  after  wave,  each  one  flying  higher  and  higher,  but 
there  was  no  thought  of  them  ever  reaching  the  high  deck 
where  I  was. 

That  was  a  mistake.  There  was  a  tremendous  shock 
as  if  we  had  struck  a  rock,  and  the  next  thing  I  was 
pinned  down  on  the  deck  like  a  postage  stamp.  It 
seemed  to  me  there  was  a  ton  of  water  on  my  back.  I 
was  full  of  salt  water  inside  and  out,  choked  and  satu- 
rated, and  there  was  old  "Tarpaulin"  laughing  at  me, 
and  repeating  his  cynical  injunction,  "better  go  below, 
sir."  I  went  below  then,  and  was  taken  in  charge  by  a 
cabin  steward  who  my  uncle,  as  I  afterwards  found  out, 
had  bargained  with  to  dry  me  out. 

It  is  not  quite  clear  where  the  best  point  of  view  is  for 
one  of  these  channel  mail  steamers,  but  that  it  is  on  shore 
somewhere  there  is  no  doubt.  They  are  amphibious, 
pay  no  attention  to  seas,  go  over  them,  through  or 
under  them  just  as  the  course  determines,  leaving  a  white 
streak  behind. 


CHAPTER    IV. 

GANG  AWA*  TILL  NEW  YORK THE  EFFECT  OF  TWO  TURNS  A 

MINUTE BRITISH    LOCOMOTIVES NEW    LONDON. 

— Speaking  of  steamers,  I  am  reminded  of 
a  story  told  by  Engineer  Jones,  the  man  of  "beam 
engines"  who  was  previously  mentioned  in  these  notes. 
Mr.  Jones  was  not  always  a  "beam  engineer,"  he  has 
seen  salt  service  in  various  seas,  antipodal  and  other- 


22  NOTES     BY     A     STUDENT. 

wise,    and    carries    the    usual    mess    room    quantity    of 
anecdotes. 

One  of  these  relates  to  an  old  Scotch  engineer  of  the 
Collins  and  Cunard  times  40  years  or  so  ago.  The 
engineer,  whom  we  will  call  McNab?  was  in  the  New 
York  and  Liverpool  service,  and  had  engaged  an  assistant 
in  Liverpool  who  on  the  first  night  out,  at  the  change 
of  watch  went  to  the  "Chief's"  cabin  to  ask  if  there 
were  any  special  orders  for  the  night  watch.  McNab 
thought  a  moment  and  then  said,  ' l  Mr.  Blackie,  ye  '1  niver 
mind  the  mates  the  night,  they  are  like  cats  and  dinna 
like  to  get  their  feet  wet.  Go  you  out  to  the  fore-deck 
yersell,  and  if  there  is  not  too  much  water  comin  over 
there,  slap  the  coals  in  till  her  and  let  her  gang  awa '  till 
New  York." 

I  think  the  story  is  true,  it  sounds  so. 

—Again  respecting  "water  comin'  over"  I 
will  relate  some  experience  of  my  own  sea  travel.  We 
were  in  a  5,000  ton  vessel  driving  to  windward  and 
everything  was  wet  up  to  the  foreyard.  The  skipper 
in  talking  of  the  matter  to  some  of  the  passengers  said 
that  two  turns  less  per  minute  of  the  screw  would  stop 
the  water  from  coming  over. 

This  seemed  incredible,  and,  after  some  bantering,  the 
Captain,  after  asking  us  to  count  the  revolutions,  took 
out  a  card,  scribbled  a  note  and  sent  it  below  to  the  en- 
gineer on  watch.  The  screw  ran  down  from  68  to  66, 
and  in  half  an  hour  the  forecastle  was  dry.  The  water 
was  stopped  instantly.  Of  course  at  this  day  there  is 
too  much  free  board  to  ship  spray,  except  in  "tremend- 
ous driving"  to  windward,  but  in  the  older  ships  it  was  a 
great  discomfort  because  the  spray  turned  to  a  kind 
of  mist  and  came  beyond  the  waist,  or  even  to  the  after 
deck. 


NOTES     BY     A     STUDENT.  23 

—To  get  on  land  again.  I  have  had  my 
first  good  look  at  a  typical  English  locomotive  and  I 
like  it.  I  expected  to  be  disappointed,  and  would  have 
been,  only  that  one  of  our  professors  had  in  his  lectures 
so  thoroughly  imbued  us  with  a  hatred  of  machine  orna- 
ment, that  the  English  engine  seemed  natural  and 
right.  Nevertheless  there  seemed  to  be  a  section  missing 
where  the  pilot,  or  in  Western  parlance,  the  "cow- 
catcher" should  be  attached. 

There  also  seemed  to  be  a  great  want  of  many  other 
details  as  though  the  engine  had  been  partially  stripped 
in  the  round  house  and  sent  out  without  being  "dressed," 
but  looking  under  it  I  found  all  that  were  required  de- 
tails and  nothing  more.  The  solid  end  side  rods  that 
fought  their  way  to  our  country  after  some  years  of  use 
here,  looked  natural,  but  the  driving  wheels  reminded 
me  of  a  bicycle.  The  long  slender  spokes,  sixteen  in 
number,  and  the  light  weight  of  all  was  a  miracle. 
There  was  seemingly  not  half  the  metal  in  this  six  foot 
wheel  that  we  use  in  ours,  five  feet  in  diameter.  The 
rule  of  this  company  is  to  paint  or  caseharden  surfaces, 
no  polish  anywhere,  not  even  on  brass  parts  where  there 
is  no  finishing  required. 

I  am  watching  these  railway  matters  pretty  closely 
and  am  trying  to  see  things  impartially,  but  one  thing 
must  be  conceded  now,  and  that  is,  that  criticism  of 
English  locomotive  practice  is  rather  a  dangerous  kind 
of  amusement  for  any  one  with  a  mechanical  reputation 
at  stake.  I  have  read  volumes  in  the  form  of  letters 
and  essays  on  English  and  American  locomotives,  and 
am  going  to  look  the  matter  up  for  myself. 

One  more  thing  is  certain,  that  is  the  speed  at  which 
the  trains  are  drawn.  We  left  Liverpool  at  3  P.  M., 


24  NOTES    BY    A     STUDENT. 

and  at  7.25  were  landed  at  St.  Pancreas,  London,  more 
than  200  miles  away.  In  respect  to  speed,  the  run  was 
not  exceptional,  but  in  the  regular  service  and  time. 

— Unprofessionally,  perhaps,  I  must  put  in 
some  notes  here  of  "impressions  in  London,"  of  which 
first  and  mainly  is  the  evidence  of  wealth.  Essays  on 
the  .per  capita  wealth  of  this  or  that  nation  are  well 
enough,  but  here  you  "see"  the  wealth.  There  are 
millions  wherever  you  look.  Why  the  St.  Pancreas  Sta- 
tion has  cost  enough  to  build  and  equip  a  considerable 
railway. 

The  dry  observations  of  a  strange  traveler  have  but 
little  interest  and  less  value.  Their  chief  merit  is  con- 
fined to  "impressions."  I  propose  to  have  my  Uncle 
furnish  mainly  whatever  is  to  be  set  down  for  fact  in 
these  notes,  and  I  will  write  out  impressions.  He  is  a 
Scotchman  by  trade,  and  is  at  home  in  Great  Britain 
as  well  as  many  European  and  other  countries  where 
his  vocation  has  called  him. 

On  the  way  to  the  hotel  I  remarked  to  him  that  there 
were  no  old  buildings  such  as  I  expected  to  see.  "Old," 
said  he,  "who  told  you  London  was  old?  It  is  old  in 
years,  but  in  no  other  sense.  Why  it  is  one  of  the  new- 
est cities  in  the  world;  cities,  I  say,  not  a  condensed 
aggregation  of  people.  Population  don't  make  a  city. 
Pekin  and  Yeddo  are  not  cities.  It  takes  streets,  public 
buildings,  sewerage,  municipal  government,  parks,  hos- 
pitals, railways  and  a  dozen  more  things  to  make  a  city. 
Nearly  all  the  great  buildings  here  are  new.  Twenty 
years  has  made  a  new  London. 

"Then  again  London  is  not  a  city,  but  is  a  collection 
of  cities,  only  one  of  which  bears  the  name.  The  core, 
to  so  call  it — one  mile  square — is  the  'City,7  and  ninety- 


NOTES     BY     A     STUDENT.  25 

nine  other  square  miles  of  area  are  separate  towns  or 
cities.  The  whole  is  governed  by  the  Metropolitan 
Board,  except  the  City — the  square  mile.  That  is  a 
separate  part  which  was  once  within  the  walls.  All  the 
rest  were  once  villages  around.  We  are  now  in  Blooms- 
bury,  one  of  these  villages,  that  has  a  third  of  a  million 
of  people  in  it. 

"The  streets  you  say  are  crooked,  well  wait  a  while 
and  you  may  understand  that  even.  There  is  scarcely 
a  spot  in  London  where  if  conveyed  blindfolded,  one 
cannot  at  a  glance  tell  where  they  are.  A  city  laid  out 
like  a  checker  board  looks  well  on  paper,  mechanical  in 
fact,  and  Satan  himself  would  never  learn  to  find  his 
way  about  in  it.  In  a  month's  time  you  go  over  this 
whole  place  of  five  millions  population  and  find  your 
way.  Any  one  can?  unless  born  here,  which  you  may 
call  a  paradox  for  the  present. ' '  I  can 't  explain  it,  but 
that  is  no  matter.  A  native  never  knows  his  own  city 
so  well  as  a  stranger  will  learn  it  in  a  month. 


CHAPTER    V. 

PENN  AND  MAUDSLAY LONDON  PENNY  BOATS SHIPBUILD- 
ING  ON   THE   THAMES DRY  LOAM. 


—I  don't  know  what  of  London  to  set 
down  first  in  these  notes.  The  city  is  a  world  by  itself, 
not  only  commercially  and  politically  but  "technically," 
and  in  an  industrial  sense.  London  machine  works  are 
accounted  the  best  in  the  United  Kingdom,  and  com- 
mand the  highest  price  for  their  products.  The  great 
establishments  of  Penn  and  Maudslay,  famous  all  over 
the  world,  are  here.  My  uncle  and  I  went  down  to 


26  NOTES     BY     A     STUDENT. 

the  Perm  works,  at  Woolwich?  to-day  by  the  penny  boat 
line,  as  it  is  called.  The  engines  of  the  boat  were  made 
by  the  Penns,  and  were  to  me  a  curiosity,  because  of 
their  arrangement.  They  were  of  the  oscillating  type, 
and  astonishing  because  of  the  extreme  lightness  of  the 
various  parts. 

It  is  a  common  thing  at  home  to  hear  of  British 
clumsy  work,  and  how  everything  in  England  is  made 
heavy  and  unwieldy.  One  of  the  boys  at  college  asked 
Professor  Eisenschlager  about  this  one  time,  and  his 
answer  was  "Did  you  ever  see  a  Coventry  bicycle,  that, 
of  all  machines  ever  made,  has  the  least  material  and 
the  narrowest  factor  of  safety?"  The  factor  of  safety 
clause  I  conceded  at  once,  having  been  pitched  head- 
long into  a  stone  pile  that  same  day  from  one  of  these 
Coventry  machines,  but  as  a  matter  of  fact  there  was  a 
time,  and  a  tolerably  long  time,  in  which  a  Coventry 
bicycle  was  the  lightest  machine  in  the  world  for  its 
strength  and  purposes. 

The  engines  in  the  penny  boats  are  much  the  same, 
even  the  crank  shafts  are  worked  down  to  correspond 
with  the  strains,  tapered  and  swelled  between  the  bear- 
ings. The  connecting  rods  hitch  overhead,  the  cylinders 
being  directly  beneath  the  shaft,  and  the  cranks  sweep- 
ing around  so  as  to  almost  touch  the  pistol  rod  stuffing 
boxes.  The  air  pump  is  worked  from  a  crank  in  the 
center  of  the  main  shaft.  The  eccentrics  are  loose  on 
the  shaft  and  for  reversing  are  thrown  from  one  angle 
of  advance  to  the  other,  coming  up  against  stops  each 
way.  The  valve  movement  I  could  not  make  out,  it  is  a 
resultant  of  the  eccentric's  motion  and  also  of  the 
cylinder's  oscillation,  but  one  thing  is  sure,  if  the  weight 
of  the  engines  is  divided  by  their  horse  power  the  quo- 


NOTES     BY    A    STUDENT.  27 

tient  will  be  less  than  in  any  like  machine  I  have  ever 
seen  before. 

The  boats  are  about  100  feet  long  with  12  feet  beam, 
made  of  thin  steel,  with  feathering  paddle  wheels,  and 
run  12  to  14  miles  an  hour.  They  are  started,  stopped 
and  handled  about,  much  as  one  would  a  canoe.  It  is 
wonderful,  this  river  traffic,  and  if  not  managed  well 
the  whole  fleet  would  be  jammed  and  sunk  in  a  week. 
It  reminds  one  of  the  street  driving  here,  and  that  re- 
minds one  of  eternity,  that  is,  a  person  expects  every 
moment  to  be  smashed,  but  never  is. 

We  arrived  at  Woolwich,  a  suburb  of  London  on  the 
Surrey  side  of  the  river,  nine  miles  away,  and  saw  the 
outline  of  the  great  arsenal.  A  short  walk  back  from 
the  river  brought  us  to  Penn's  works,  John  Penn  &  Son, 
where,  as  a  rule,  only  government  work  is  done  now.  I 
mean  in  marine  engines,  because  the  Scotch  have  car- 
ried off  the  hulls  and  merchant  work,  and  the  Thames 
knows  it  no  more. 

My  uncle  explained  this  as  we  came  down  the  river  on 
the  boat.  "You  see,"  said  he,  "these  London  workmen 
consider  themselves  worth  more  per  day  than  those  on 
the  Clyde,  and  they  are,  when  their  skill  can  be  brought 
to  bear,  but  that  will  not  do  on  a  ship's  hull  where  the 
measure  of  a  man 's  performance  is  muscular  rather  than 
intellectual,  but  it  will  do  in  respect  to  making  steam 
engines,  as  is  proved  by  past  and  present  circumstances. 
The  engine  work  has  remained  here,  and  the  best  engines 
are  made  in  London. 

"It  is  not  twenty  years  ago  when  there  were  famous 
shipyards  along  the  Thames  here.  Samuda  and  Dud- 
geon on  the  Isle  of  Dogs.  The  great  yard  at  Blackwall, 
the  Thames  Company,  Scott  Russell's  yard  at  Deptford, 


28  NOTES    BY    A    STUDENT. 

Penn's  also,  where  we  are  now  going,  was  a  great  ship- 
yard. It  is  all  gone  now,  or  nearly  gone.  Coal  dues, 
local  rates,  taxes  you  call  them,  and  other  elements  of 
cost,  among  them  wages,  became  dearer  here,  and  the 
industry  had  to  move  to  the  north  where  it  is  now,  and 
where  it  will  remain  when  your  grandchildren  read 
these  notes  you  are  making  up. 

"I  am  not  a  prophet,  a  philosopher,  or  an  economist, 
but  have  watched  shipbuilding  and  other  skilled  indus- 
tries enough  to  know  they  settle  where  production  is 
cheapest,  and  all  the  silly  efforts  of  law  makers  and 
theorists  to  found  industry  on  any  other  than  the  cir- 
cumstances of  "cost"  are  not  worth  attention.  That 
element  of  cost  hardest  to  determine  and  last  to  under- 
stand is  wages,  and  to  rate  this  by  the  amount  paid  to 
men  for  their  time  is  folly.  The  rate  of  wages  is  less 
on  the  Clyde  than  here,  but  that  is  no  matter,  the  pro- 
duction of  the  wages  is  most  likely  in  the  same  propor- 
tion. I  think  there  is  no  great  difference  in  this  respect 
between  the  Thames  and  the  Clyde,  and  there  need  not 
be.  Other  things  I  have  named  make  up  enough  to  move 
the  industry,  and  it  has  gone — gone  to  stay. ' ' 

—The  first  thing  at  Penn's  that  at- 
tracted my  attention  were  the  iron  castings.  I  had  seen 
a  good  many  before  but  none  like  these.  They  reminded 
one  of  wooden  "patterns"  finished  with  steel  colored 
paint.  The  surfaces  were  as  flat,  the  corners  as  true, 
and  the  outline  as  perfect  as  woodwork  could  be  made. 
I  called  my  uncle's  attention  to  this,  remarking  that 
the  patterns  must  be  good.  "Patterns!"  said  he,  "are 
not  used,  at  least  for  anything  you  are  looking  at.  They 
don't  need  patterns  here,  and  don't  cast  in  green  sand 
anything  except  grate  bars  and  the  like."  This  I 


NOTES     BY     A     STUDENT.  29 

found  to  be  true  when  I  came  to  the  foundry.  The 
moulds  were  either  loam  work  or  dried  by  firing.  Loam 
and  "dry  work"  are  done  to  some  extent  in  all  large 
foundries,  but  not  to  the  extent  it  is  carried  out  here, 
and  I  am  just  arriving  at  an  understanding  of  its  ob- 
jects. 

A  cast  iron  part  or  structure  without  inherent  strains 
can  be  relied  upon,  but  one  cast  of  hot  iron  in  green 
sand  and  ready  to  break  because  of  cooling  strains  must 
be  double  the  size  to  have  any  safety.  This  is  the  diffi- 
culty with  steel  castings,  run  from  metal  500  degrees 
hotter  than  iron  requires ;  it  is  a  treacherous  material  un- 
less annealed.  Steel  framing  cost  the  owners  of  the  '  *  City 
of  Paris"  a  pretty  sum?  it  is  true,  yet  it  is  hard  to  see 
why  merchant  marine  engine  frames  are  not  built  up 
with  wrought  iron  or  steel  struts  and  braces  as  they  are 
in  many  war  steamers. 


CHAPTER   VI. 

A  STEAM   HAMMER  FOR  GRAVITY A  STEAMBOAT  ON  A  HILL. 

EXPLOSIVES  ON  THE  PACIFIC   COAST THE  LINE  OF 

LEAST  RESISTANCE. 

— Looking  over  the  incidental  part  of  these 


notes  I  find  one  or  two  old  ones  that  will  do  to  sandwich 
in  here.  The  first  relates  to  a  Scotch  engineer  whom  I 
met  on  the  Pacific  Coast,  in  San  Francisco.  A  veritable 
type  of  that  nation,  of  which  Mr.  Thiers,  the  French 
historian,  said  "there  are  only  four  millions  of  them, 
which  is  a  God's  blessing,  for  if  there  had  been  a  few 
more  they  would  have  ruled  the  world." 


30  NOTES    BY    A     STUDENT. 

I  found  out  there,  in  California,  a  Scotchman  who 
had,  at  an  early  day,  taken  out  to  that  distant  land  one 
of  "Jamie  Nasmyth's  steam  hammers"  to  crush  quartz 
with.  It  was  got  up  with  difficulty  into  the  mountains, 
erected,  and  enclosed  by  a  shed  of  one-inch  boards. 
When  ready,  a  large  piece  of  quartz  was  put  on  the 
anvil,  the  "tup"  raised,  and  a  full  head  of  steam  turned 
on  top.  The  result  was  surprising.  The  one-inch 
boards  were  riddled  and  the  whole  place  scarred  with 
flying  quartz.  Every  one  within  range  was  more  or  less 
hurt  by  splinters  or  quartz,  and  the  Scotchman,  who 
now  resides  in  San  Francisco,  came  near  being  hung 
by  the  miners. 

Here  is  another  story  in  my  notes,  that  relates  to  an 
eccentric  but  able,  mechanical  engineer  from  Ayreshire, 
a  relative  of  Bobby  Burns,  the  poet.  This  man,  in  1854, 
to  secure  cheap  land  went  out  on  a  hill  in  San  Francisco, 
and  started  a  machine  shop  there.  It  was  driven  by  a 
windmill,  and  if  any  of  the  readers  of  these  notes  know 
that  locality  I  need  not  say  there  was  no  lack  of  power. 

To  prevent  his  anvils  and  other  detached  implements 
from  being  blown  away  he  arranged  his  shop  in  a  cellar, 
and  did  a  good  business.  He,  in  common  with  all 
Scotchmen,  had  a  weakness  for  steam  craft,  and  set  out, 
when  opportunity  served?  to  build  a  steamboat  up  there. 
300  feet  above  the  bay,  and  built  it  accordingly. 

The  boat  was  40  feet  long,  7  feet  beam,  and  a  pro- 
peller in  type.  When  done,  came  the  problem  of 
launching  the  boat.  A  mile  horizontally  and  300  feet 
vertically  was  beyond  any  gradient  Mr.  Lochhead  had 
previously  dealt  with,  and  he  began  treating  with 
teamsters  to  haul  the  vessel  to  the  water.  Just  here 


NOTES    BY     A     STUDENT.  31 

came  an  illustration  of  California  methods,   not  quite 
abandoned  out  there  at  this  day. 

One  man  thought  $250  about  the  figure  for  hauling 
the  boat  to  the  water.  Another  said  this  was  too  much, 
he  could  do  it  for  $200.  A  third  said  the  thing  was  a 
swindle  and  $100  was  enough.  Lochhead  was  disgusted, 
and  waiving  contracts  asked  a  friend  of  his  to  come  up 
and  haul  the  boat  down  at  whatever  the  job  was  worth. 

The  friend  borrowed  two  long  beams  to  go  on  his 
wagon,  took  out  the  coupling  pole,  and  set  the  wheels  24 
feet  apart.  Lochhead  had  the  vessel  raised  high  enough 
to  load,  and  in  five  hours  she  was  in  the  bay.  He  then 
asked  the  teamster  how  much  his  charge  would  be,  and 
the  answer  was  five  dollars  not  including  "drinks," 
which  he,  the  teamster,  would  pay  out  of  that  sum. 

—This  will  be  construed  as  a  joke  or  per- 
haps a  tough  story,  and  might  be  either,  but  it  is  also 
true,  and  contains  a  moral  larger  than  Lochhead 's  boat; 
that  is?  we  learn  by  experience,  and  know  very  little  not 
acquired  in  that  way.  The  man  who  wanted  $250  to 
haul  the  boat  thought,  perhaps,  it  was  worth  that  much, 
it  would  be  no  stretch  of  fancy  to  think  so.  But  viewed 
in  any  way  it  is  an  example  of  what  is  called  stupidity, 
and  a  parallel  for  another  yarn  of  like  ilk  I  heard  out 
there,  that  involved  another  Scotchman. 

It  relates  to  an  old  stamp  mill  in  the  mountains,  that 
was  being  taken  down  to  make  way  for  a  modern  one. 
The  stamp  heads  were  huge  masses  of  iron,  with  double 
stems  in  each,  the  cams  working  between  the  stems  on 
cross  tappets  which  embraced  both.  The  stamp  heads, 
stems  and  tappets  were  one  mass  of  rust,  and  too  heavy 
to  handle  without  taking  apart.  Several  men  under- 
took this  job  by  roasting  the  heads  on  fires,  hammering 


32  NOTES    BY    A    STUDENT. 

with  sledges,  breaking  drifts,  and  venting  profanity. 

The  stamp  heads  had  key  ways  through  them,  along- 
side the  stems,  and  as  the  keys  were  out  a  young  Scotch- 
man then  conceived  an  idea  which  he  at  once  put  into 
practice.  While  the  men  were  at  dinner  he  cut  up 
some  dynamite  cartridges,  and  putting  a  quarter  of  one 
into  each  of  the  keyways  fired  them  with  a  fuse. 
He  "popped  out"  all  of  the  old  stems  before  the  men 
returned  from  dinner,  which  amazed  them  and  spoiled  a 
week  of  work. 

1  found  along  here  a  number  of  ' '  notes ' ' 

from  the  same  region,  a  good  share  of  them  connected 
with  dynamite.  Powder  is  not  considered  dangerous  on 
the  Pacific  Coast.  The  people  blow  out  holes  to  plant 
fruit  trees?  dig  post  holes  for  fences,  and  split  their  fire 
wood  with  dynamite  cartridges. 

A  well  known  engineer  had  a  wharf  to  build,  and 
some  hundreds  of  old  piles  to  pull  out  or  saw  off.  After 
spending  several  days  in  sawing  off  a  few  of  them,  he 
lowered  a  dynamite  cartridge  to  the  top  of  the  mud, 
about  15  feet  below  the  surface  of  the  water,  fired  it, 
and  shaved  off  a  pile  as  clean  as  a  mower  cuts  a  weed. 
This  was  fun  for  the  boys.  The  engineer  was  called 
away  for  half  a  day,  and  when  he  returned  the  men  had 
not  only  cut  off  all  the  old  piles  with  dynamite,  but  were 
amusing  themselves  mowing  down  a  new  wharf. 

While  on  the  subject  of  dynamite  as  a 

subaqueous  agent,  I  will  revert  to  some  experiments 
made  during  the  Civil  War.  Most  people  will  remember 
how  it  was  attempted  to  throw  a  wave  over  some  sand 
forts  at  Charleston,  and  how  General  Butler  undertook 
to  blow  up  Fort  Fisher  with  gunpowder  placed 
"against"  the  walls.  Neither  attempt  amounted  to 


NOTES     BY     A     STUDENT.  33 


more  than  a  waste  of  powder,  and  the  development  of 
ridicule.  The  War  Department  came  to  the  conclusion 
a  little  science  in  the  matter  would  be  a  proper  ingre- 
dient in  these  gunpowder  schemes,  and  detailed  Gen. 
B.  C.  Tilghman,  of  Philadelphia,  an  able  scientific  man, 
to  furnish  some  whys  and  wherefores  in  the  case. 

The  General's  report  was  positive,  curt  and  explicit, 
something  like  this,  "The  force  of  explosion  follows  the 
line  of  least  resistance."  This  was  ten  words  and 
enough,  but  had  to  be  based  on  experiment ;  so  the  Gen- 
eral put  a  bag  of  powder  under  an  immense  wooden 
beam  of  hard  pine,  bolted  up  solidly,  sunk  the  whole 
twenty  feet  or  so  in  the  Schuylkill  River,  fired  the 
charge,  and  found  the  powder  had  bored  a  sufficient 
hole  up  through  the  wood  and  left  by  the  shortest  route. 

The  General's  unprofessional  explanation  was  laconic. 
"Where  else  should  it  go?"  said  he,  "it  certainly  was 
not  going  8000  miles  through  to  the  antipodes,  and  it 
was  not  going  five  or  ten  miles  laterally  through  water 
and  earth,  so  it  came  upward  twenty  feet,  on  the  shortest 
line  and  the  one  of  least  resistance." 

Dynamite,  if  one  is  to  believe  half  the  stories  con- 
cerning it,  don't  act  that  way,  but  this  divergence  has 
now  covered  five  pages  of  my  note  book,  and  I  must  get 
back  to  London  again. 


34  NOTES     BY     A     STUDENT. 


CHAPTER   VII. 

ISLE    OF    MAN MANX    CATS PICKLED    AT    SEA KIPPERS — 

LAXA  WATER  WHEEL PEARS '  SOAP. 


—We  are  going  over  to  the  Isle  of  Man  in 
a  day  or  two.  This  principality,  the  land  of  cats  with- 
out tails,  the  Manxmen's  land,  with  a  government  of  its 
own,  is  midway  of  the  Irish  Channel,  four  or  five  hours' 
run  from  Liverpool,  independent  of  weather. 

Here  is  the  itinerary,  as  the  tourists  call 

it:  Went  down  by  morning  mail;  four-and-a-half 
hours  from  London,  200  miles;  and  out  to  one  of  those 
paddle  steamers,  like  the  one  I  described  some  time  ago — 
the  Dublin  one.  May  my  shadow  grow  less  if  ever  I  go 
into  another.  It  was  blowing  half  a  gale,  which  means 
a  gale  and  a  half,  anywhere  outside  the  English  or  Irish 
Channels,  and  in  one  hour  from  starting  there  was  salt 
water  going  down  the  smoke  stack.  It  was  an  excursion 
boat,  and  a  fine  one,  or  intended  to  be.  We  had  about 
a  thousand  passengers — half  of  them  were  seasick — 
piled  up  on  the  cabin  floor,  some  places  two  deep.  The 
air,  or  gases,  coming  up  out  of  the  hatches,  could  be  seen 
and  felt,  so  I  stowed  myself  on  the  deck  to  the  ' '  leeward 
of  the  chimney,"  as  the  mate  called  it,  and  hung  on  by 
a  stay  rope. 

This  gave  the  advantage  of  warm  water,  or  hot  water 
rather,  because  all  that  reached  me  had  first  been  on  the 
smoke  pipe  and  came  down  at  from  100  to  150  degrees. 
It  was  refreshing,  but  lasted  too  long,  besides  I  was  not 
accustomed  to  bathing  with  my  clothes  on.  It  was  the 
intention  to  describe  the  behavior  of  the  steamer,  but 
not  much  of  this  was  seen.  It  was  felt,  however,  and 


NOTES     BY     A     STUDENT.  35 


until  the  contrary  is  known,  I  will  contend  that  the  bul- 
warks and  freeboard  of  that  boat  were  of  India  rubber. 
Iron,  steel  or  wood  could  not  have  withstood  the  blows, 
twisting  and  hammering.  We  finally  shot  into  the  little 
harbor  behind  the  breakwater  at  Douglas,  a  fine  little 
city  devoted  to  "kippers"  or  smoked  herring.  This  I 
say  because  the  main  business  there  seems  to  be  to  catch 
and  prepare  these  fish,  also  catching  and  preparing 
tourists. 

At  Douglas  my  uncle  emerged  as  dry  as  an  Egyptian 
of  Sorasis'  time?  with  a  perfume  of  tobacco  and  toddy 
about  him — said  he  had  been  "chatting"  with  the  chief, 
and  as  I  discovered  had  been  playing  a  joke  on  me. 
"Tech,"  said  he,  when  we  started,  "the  scenery  in  the 
channel  is  fine  during  brisk  wind,  but  you  seem  to  have 
been  in  the  hot  well.  Enjoyed  yourself,  eh?" 

We  dro^e  to  a  fine  hotel,  the  Castle  something,  that 
had  a  weird  history,  not  worth  recounting.  My  uncle 
had  a  huge  fire  built  in  a  wide  grate  and  I  began  dry- 
ing out  my  "environment,"  promoting  evaporation  with 
hot  water  and  spirits  inside.  It  was  a  place  of  comfort 
certainly,  that  grand  old  inn. 

My  first  observation  was  the  people.  Take  the  waiters 
in  the  hotel,  men  and  women,  and  they  would  pass  for 
the  "top  of  society"  in  most  parts  of  the  world.  I  do 
not  mean  in  manners,  although  that  may  perhaps  be  in- 
cluded, but  in  feature  and  general  appearance.  The 
Manx  people  are  the  finest  looking  race  in  Europe  and 
are  a  "race/'  because  they  have  been  here  for  a  thou- 
sand years  with  scarcely  any  admixture  from  the  main- 
land. They  resemble  the  Irish  more  than  Scotch,  be- 
cause mostly  of  dark  complexion  and,  as  before  said,  are 
wonderfully  fine  looking. 


36  NOTES    BY    A    STUDENT. 

The  next  morning,  a  beautiful  one,  we  took  a  cab  to 
the  Laxa  lead  mines  to  see  the  great  water  wheel  and 
the  country.  It  is  a  distance  of  seven  miles  or  so  over 
roads  that  are  perfect;  winding  around  cliffs  that  de- 
scend sheer  into  the  sea,  which  was  then  as  smooth  as  a 
lake.  One  of  the  first,  or  rather  several  of  the  first 
things  seen,  were  the  veritable  "Manx  cats,"  and  sure 
enough,  without  tails.  Only  a  short  stub !  There  is  no 
myth  in  the  matter ;  it  is  a  straight  story. 

We  passed  the  Governor's  house,  and  learned  from 
the  coachman  a  good  deal  of  Manx  affairs  such  as  he 
could  know,  and  that  was  no  small  amount.  His  in- 
formation, and  a  great  deal  besides  from  other  sources, 
led  to  a  belief  that  the  Manx  administration  should  be 
cut  up  in  pieces,  diffused  as  a  leaven,  in  the  affairs  of 
more  pretentious  countries.  One  might  well  endure 
cats  without  the  caudal  appendage  and  eat  "kippers" 
every  morning,  to  gain  the  advantage  of  living  under 
such  a  government  as  this  seems  to  be.  There  are 
opinions  as  to  policy  and  the  effect  of  public  measures, 
but  venality,  or  want  of  honesty  and  capacity,  none. 

The  Laxa  water  wheel  is  to  operate  the  pumps  in  one 
of  the  mineSj  or  the  system  of  mines  here.  It  is  more 
than  sixty  feet  in  diameter,  and  although  not  near  so 
great  in  power  as  the  Bur  don  wheel,  at  Troy,  N.  Y.,  is 
much  more  of  a  curiosity. 

The  water  is  brought  underground,  in  pipes,  and  rises 
in  a  circular  tower  of  masonry  to  the  top  of  the  wheel, 
and  then  flows  out  in  a  spout  at  right  angles  to  the  tower. 
This  tower  can  be  ascended  by  a  neat  winding  stair 
around  the  outside,  and  the  "spout,"  which  is  covered 
and  has  a  railing  around  it,  furnishes  a  walk  out  over 
the  wheel. 


NOTES    BY    A     STUDENT.  37 

On  one  end  of  the  main  shaft  is  a  crank  of  ten  feet 
radius  to  give  a  stroke  of  twenty  feet.  A  long  connec- 
tion of  wood,  iron  trussed,  reaches  to  the  first  of  a  series 
of  links,  also  of  wood,  each  about  fifty  feet  long,  that 
run  on  a  railway  at  the  ends.  These  links  extend  at 
least  a  quarter  of  a  mile,  and  do  not  in  that  distance 
consume  two  per  cent,  in  friction.  From  the  ends  of 
these  the  pump  rods,  bobs,  etc.,  are  the  same  as  are  em- 
ployed in  other  places. 

The  wheel  and  its  connections,  including  the  water 
tower,  seem  to  be  set  up  in  the  air,  even  the  tail  race  is 
an  enclosed  flume  that  conducts  the  spent  water  back 
to  the  tower  where  it  passes  underground  again. 

— Just  here  is  a  chance  of  some  mechanical 
moralizing.  Suppose  that  wheel,  instead  of  being  con- 
structed with  arms  and  tie  rods  as  light  as  a  bicycle, 
had  been  a  heavy,  cumbrous  affair  of  the  utilitarian 
kind,  and  had  been  set  down  in  a  pit  in  the  usual  manner 
with  an  old  box  penstock  and  chute ;  half  its  cost  would 
have  been  saved,  and  what  of  that  1  No  one  would  ever 
have  gone  out  to  see  the  wheel.  The  cab  fares  extracted 
from  affluent  travelers  will  each  year  fully  pay  the  dif- 
ference, and  as  a  large  share  of  the  community  consider 
money  thus  earned  a  gain  of  wealth,  it  is  much  more 
legitimate  and  consistent  than  selling  " Pears'  soap," 
and  much  else  that  is  invented  to  play  on  human  credu- 
lity, and  extract  shekels  from  the  unwary. 


38  NOTES    BY    A     STUDENT. 


CHAPTER   VIII. 

•» 

THE    SCIENCE    OF    WAGONS JAMS    IN    BROADWAY LONDON 

DRIVERS BUILDING   CITIES. 


1  wonder  if  horse  and  wagon  traffic  will 

be  technical  enough  to  go  into  these  notes?  Wheel 
traffic  is  a  tolerably  extensive  matter  in  human  affairs; 
like  some  other  great  industries,  has  no  literature,  and  it 
is  time  some  attention  was  given  to  it. 

In  a  great  city  like  this  of  London,  and  indeed,  in  all 
cities,  the  most  prominent  element  is  houses,  next  people, 
then  horses  and  wagons. 

The  houses  have  absorbed  the  highest  human  talent, 
engineering  and  architectural;  people  have  engrossed 
the  greatest  philosophical  minds  the  world  has  produced, 
but  the  horses  and  wagons,  third  in  rank,  find  no  place 
in  science,  philosophy  or  ethics. 

The  subject  was  thrust  upon  me  here.  Just  think  of 
the  swarm  of  vehicles,  goods  and  human  beings  crowded 
into  this  population  of  four  and  a  half  millions;  think 
also  that  they  are  a  shopkeeping,  commercial  people,  and 
then  again  think  of  their  traffic  being  carried  on  in  nar- 
row streets,  few  in  number  and  irregular  in  course. 

To  explain  this  in  some  measure  is  my  present  task, 
and,  as  usual,  my  Uncle  Camshaft  had  to  be  called  in.  I 
always  consult  him  before  setting  down  in  these  notes 
anything  relating  to  a  new  subject,  and  I  quote  him  as 
nearly  as  possible,  except  now  and  then  an  expletive  of 
a  non-technical  nature.  On  street  traffic  he  said :  "Did 
you  ever  see  a  jam  in  Broadway,  New  York?  If  you  did, 
then  you  have  seen  the  most  stupid  thing  imaginable,  and 
one  you  cannot  understand  fully  until  you  study  the 


NOTES     BY     A     STUDENT.  39 

subject  here  in  London.  Jam  in  Broadway!  Look  at 
the  Strand  or  Cheapside;  look  anywhere  here,  on  the 
bridges  even,  and  count  the  vehicles,  or  ask  some  one 
who  has,  it  is  all  tabulated — 13,000  cross  London  Bridge 
daily — and  then  compare  with  Broadway.  There  they 
meander  without  system  and  without  control.  Here 
they  drive  by  a  system  that  has  rules  as  rigid  as  those 
on  a  man-'o-war.  In  the  first  place,  you  must  remember 
that  street  traffic  follows  the  same  laws  as  liquids  flow- 
ing in  pipes.  The  width  of  a  street  represents  the  bore 
of  the  pipe,  and  the  speed  of  the  street  traffic  is  the 
same  as  the  flow  per  minute  in  the  pipes.  If  you  will 
observe  in  the  streets  you  will  see  all  the  traffic  moving 
about  twice  as  fast  as  in  New  York,  perhaps  more  than 
twice  as  fast.  You  will  see  four  lines  of  vehicles;  two 
each  way;  the  inner  lines  at  six  to  eight  miles  an  hour; 
the  outer  or  curbstone  traffic,  in  two  other  lines  at  three 
to  four  miles  an  hour.  You  may  see  cabs  and  carts  leave 
the  inner  or  fast  lines  and  wedge  into  the  curb  lines. 
That  means  they  are  going  to  stop  somewhere  near. 

"Put  one  of  these  Broadway  jams  into  motion  on  this 
principle  and  the  street  would  be  cleared  in  five  minutes. 
Jams  occur  here  sometimes,  but  they  amount  to  a  'slow- 
ing' of  the  traffic.  No  such  thing  is  known  as  a  chaotic 
mass  of  vehicles  all  trying  to  go  somewhere — wherever 
they  can  get  clearance  for.  There  is  no  division  of  the 
traffic,  'crawlers'  mix  in  with  passenger  service,  and 
above  all,  heavy  loads  of  merchandise  right  among  the 
express  traffic  it  may  be  called. 

"Just  note  down  in  that  book  of  yours  that  driving  is 
a  science  in  London,  also  that  it  is  a  trade  that  must  be 
learned,  and  you  might  also  note  down  that  this  remark 
applies  to  no  other  city.  Also  keep  in  mind  that  people 


40  NOTES    BY    A    STUDENT. 

can  cross  a  street  in  comparative  safety  here  in  the 
densest  traffic.  They  cross,  two  lines  going  one  way, 
then  they  come  to  a  guard  or  refuge  in  the  middle  of  the 
street,  where  they  can  stand  in  safety  until  an  opening 
appears  on  the  other  side.  Just  imagine  a  person,  a 
woman  for  example,  finding  her  way  to  the  middle  of 
Broadway.  What  would  she  do  next?  Could  not  get 
back  and  could  not  go  forward,  and  could  not  remain. 
The  only  chance  is  to  fly.  I  have  been  there,  and  been 
trapped  that  way.  It  is  not  to  be  laughed  at. 

'  *  There  are  thousands  on  thousands  of  foreigners  here, 
from  all  nations,  and  in  all  classes  of  business,  except 
driving.  Just  make  a  note  of  that  too,  and  the  first  one 
you  find  driving,  who  is  not  an  Englishman,  call  on  me 
for  a  game  dinner  at  Simpson's,  or  a  ' spread'  at  the 
Criterion." 

I  found  since  noting  the  above,  that  my  uncle  was 
correct,  but  that  even  making  all  his  allowances,  the 
traffic  in  London  could  never  go  through  the  streets  if  it 
were  not  relieved  by  the  overhead  and  underground 
systems.  Twenty-five  millions  or  so  of  underground 
trips  and  fifty  millions  of  overhead  railway  trips  in  one 
year  relieves  the  street  surfaces. 

Getting  railways  into,   out  of,   and  all 

over  London,  is  one  of  the  greatest  engineering  feats 
here.  There  are  railway  stations  everywhere.  One  can- 
not get  five  hundred  yards  away  from  one  in  the  dense 
portions,  and  when  he  reaches  one  he  can  go  from  there 
"anywhere."  He  can  "book"  to  St.  Petersburg,  Alex- 
andria or  Bombay.  It  is  a  wonderful  system,  far  beyond 
any  power  of  mine  to  describe  or  even  to  understand. 
But  there  is  one  thing  I  am  beginning  to  understand 
very  well,  and  that  is  that  authorities  here  are  on  the 


NOTES    BY    A    STUDENT.  41 

look  out  for  ability  to  design  and  direct  these  urban 
problems.  The  man  who  succeeds  comes  to  the  front; 
men  like  Sir  Joseph  Bazalgette,  Sir  John  Fowler  and 
others.  Great  engineers  require  no  "pull"  except 
talent,  and  are  paid  for  that. 

I  am  also  beginning  to  understand  another  thing,  and 
that  is  that  building  cities  is  the  most  intricate  and  ex- 
tensive of  all  problems.  It  is  several  years  since  I  heard 
my  uncle  venting  his  wrath  on  city  builders.  "You 
have/'  said  he,  "little  engineers  and  architects  discuss- 
ing and  contending  about  curbstones,  sewers,  and  the 
effect  of  orders  of  architecture;  but  where  is  your  science 
of  cities?  The  whole  plan  an  economy  of  one.  Cities 
are  built  by  accident,  and  the  great  fact  in  their  devel- 
opment is  the  increase  of  land  values2  and  whose  pocket 
the  increment  gets  into.  Cities  were,  in  many  respects, 
better  built  a  thousand  years  ago  than  now,  because 
not  developed  by  commercial  gain,  but  by  governments. 
What  does  a  merchant  here  or  in  New  York  care  about 
the  development  of  his  street  except  his  own  house? 
Improvements  bring  rivals,  and  so  long  as  his  house 
is  the  best,  he  has  no  aim  beyond. 

' '  The  commercial  and  trading  element  never  improved 
any  city,  and  never  will;  that  calls  for  something  else. 
A  purely  mercantile  city  is  always  a  purely  disgraceful 
one.  Commerce  deals  with  gain,  not  public  adornment 
and  conveniences.  Its  principles  are  selfish,  and  in  the 
nature  of  things,  must  be." 


42  NOTES    BY    A     STUDENT. 


CHAPTER    IX. 

DOCKS    AT    MILLWALL GOTHS    AND    VANDALS — A    SCARCITY 

OF  SOIL A  HOTEL  COMMANDER THE  CURIOUS  KALKE- 

LUNG — A  FIRE  TO  LAST  TWENTY-FOUR  HOURS — 
THE    RED    ANNEX. 


"Go  down,"  said  my  uncle,  "to  the 

Millwall  docks  and  see  which  of  these  Swedish  steamers 
is  best,  and  take  passage  to  Gothenburg."  This  was  to 
me  delightful  news.  Not  that  I  was  tired  of  London, 
or  had  seen  more  than  the  crust  of  it,  but  because  I  felt 
that  enough  time  had  been  wasted  over  a  hopeless  under- 
taking. The  "horizon  widens  as  it  approaches,"  so  does 
this  Babylon,  and  there  is  no  way  to  know  anything  of  it 
worth  recounting,  without  living  here  for  years. 

I  had  become  expert  enough  in  finding  my  way.  That 
is  easy  in  London,  no  matter  where  you  want  to  go. 
Millwall  docks  are  on  the  Isle  of  Dogs,  at  the  east  end, 
and  where  the  Swedish  steamers  lie.  There  are  236  acres 
of  these  docks.  Like  all  others  they  are  locked;  that  is, 
the  gates  are  opened  at  high  water  only.  The  tides  here 
reach  19  feet  sometimes,  and  there  is  no  such  thing  as 
lying  at  a  pier  with  that  variation. 

I  went  down  by  boat  and  found  two  steamers  nearly 
ready  to  sai!2  arid  selected  the  best  looking  one,  ' '  booked ' ' 
and  went  back  to  report. 

It  costs  two  guineas  for  about  600  miles  by  this  direct 
route,  and  three  guineas  via  Hull,  which,  is  the  mail,  or 
main  route  by  water.  Of  course,  quick  mail  goes  by  land 
across  the  channel,  through  Belgium  and  Germany,  but 
not  much  quicker. 


NOTES    BY    A    STUDENT.  43 

Next  morning  we  went  down  to  the  docks  by  train 
to  embark^  and  I  soon  found  out  that  one  does  not  learn 
all  about  sea  travel  in  crossing  the  Atlantic.  There  were 
a  good  many  queer  things  here.  The  saloon,  or  cabin 
steward  was  a  "Mamselle,"  who  had  charge  of  all,  and 
good  charge  it  was.  Everything  was  Swedish.  Lan- 
guage, food,  customs,  and  I  will  add,  courtesy,  which 
latter  is  a  very  plentiful  commodity  with  these  ' '  Svensk ' ' 
people.  They  have  no  such  term  as  "Swedish,"  or 
Sweden.  It  is  "  Sverige ' '  for  the  country,  and  ' '  Svensk ' ' 
for  the  people. 

My  uncle,  who  has  seen  much  service  in  the  German 
ocean,  was  in  fine  humor,  and  set  out  with  a  lecture  on 
the  country  while  we  were  waiting  for  the  dock  to  open. 

"Now,  Tech,"  said  he,  "you  will  enjoy  for  a  time  the 
relief  of  not  watching  your  purse.  It  will  be  a  curious 
sensation.  There  is  no  bargaining  to  do,  and  no  cheat- 
ing, so  long  as  you  keep  under  that  blue  and  yellow 
flag;  neither  will  you  be  drowned.  These  skippers  are 
the  best  in  the  world,  and  have  to  be.  I  just  now  said 
the  water  would  be  like  a  mill  pond.  So  it  will  up  to 
November,  then  the  North  Sea  will  be  a  boiling  cauldron 
for  four  months.  I  have  been  nine  days  making  this 
journey  to  Gothenburg,  standing  into  the  gale,  going 
astern  and  then  running  under  the  land  to  'lie  to.' 
Nothing  is  put  on  these  decks  after  November.  It  is  the 
worst  sea  in  the  world  in  winter,  unless  it  be  the  Baltic, 
and  no  one  goes  there  in  the  winter. 

"This  vessel  is  built  of  Swedish  iron.  Run  her  on  a 
rock  or  iceberg  and  she  will  back  out  with  three  stems — 
one  in  the  middle  and  one  at  each  side  where  the  plates 
have  doubled  in.  Run  her  on  the  sand  and  she  will  He 
there  all  winter.  The  spars  and  decks  may  K~  ham- 


44  NOTES    BY    A     STUDENT. 

mered  out  of  her,  but  next  spring  they  will  shovel  the 
sand  out  and  pull  her  off  with  her  frames,  skin  and 
main  parts  all  in  shape.  Fact!  Have  known  it  so." 

We  had  a  fine  passage  of  60  hours  or  so,  and  entered 
the  mouth  of  the  Gotha  River  early  in  the  morning.  I 
was  "dumbfounded"  at  the  appearance  of  the  shores 
and  went  down  to  rout  out  my  uncle.  "See  any  stone 
or  rock  about,"  said  he,  "if  so  do  not  mind  that,  but 
look  out  for  soil,  and  as  soon  as  you  see  a  hatful  come 
and  tell  me." 

The  mist  was  clearing  away.  On  the  port  side  lay  the 
Fortress  of  Winga.  Little  islands  all  about,  mainland 
on  the  starboard,  but  of  earth  not  a  spoonful.  All 
granite — cold,  gray  granite.  Down  in  the  sea  I  could 
discern  crags  beneath  us,  how  deep  I  do  not  know.  The 
water  was  as  clear  as  light.  But  the  granite ! 

We  entered  a  river — a  fme:  wide  stream  with  a  strong 
current,  which  I  mistook  for  ebb  tide,  and  in  five  miles 
more  were  alongside  the  granite  piers  of  Gothenburg, 
pronounced  here  "Yetaborg." 

-In  the  land  of  the  "Goths  and  Vandals," 
the  mother  of  nations,  as  the  French  say.  Rome  was 
conquered  from  here;  so  was  most  everywhere  else,  in- 
cluding England  at  sundry  times,  and  finally  by  Wil- 
liam, Duke  of  Normandy,  another  of  this  same  lot.  This 
seafaring,  buccaneering^  fighting  people  that  had  noth- 
ing to  do  and  little  to  eat  at  home,  led  the  world  a 
merry  dance  for  six  centuries  or  more.  They  are  the 
colonizing  element,  and  have  some  part  in  many  modern 
nations;  they  are  the  discoverers  of  the  "majority," 
inventors  of  republican  government,  and  of  "branvin." 
I  am,  however,  becoming  non-technical. 


NOTES    BY    A    STUDENT.  45 

The  craft  about  here  are  mainly  steamers,  and  the 
commodities  of  trade  seem  to  be  mainly  wood  and  iron. 
Thousands  of  tons  of  each  of  these,  and  one  vessel  for 
Japan,  loading  with  matches!  Yes,  loading  with 
matches,  after  stowing  some  tons  of  "Swedish-bar"  at 
the  bottom  for  ballast. 

This  is  the  land  of  matches,  utan  svafvel  eller  sulfur 
(without  phosphorous  or  sulphur).  Matches  made  of 
birch,  that  do  not  poison  or  choke  one;  nice,  light 
matches  * '  made  to  gauge ; ' '  boxes  also,  uniform  through- 
out. There  are  1,500  people  in  one  match  factory  at 
Jonkoping,  and  a  dozen  more  factories  elsewhere.  I  well 
knew  the  matches  before,  and  had  seen  them  at  home  by 
thousands.  The  British  could  not  imitate  them,  found 
their  trade  injured,  and  pursued  their  usual  pacific  and 
shrewd  plan  of  "buying  out  the  works."  Bryant  & 
May  do  not  make  now  many  matches  in  East  London. 
They  make  them  in  Sweden,  at  Wennersborg,  and  else- 
where in  the  middle  section. 

A  good  deal  of  this  I  heard  from  my  uncle,  who  as 
usual  knew  all  about  everything  we  came  across.  "The 
British  idea  of  a  match, ' '  said  he,  * '  whatever  that  means 
as  a  name,  is  a  good  stout  stick  as  long  as  your  finger, 
with  a  knob  of  brimstone  on  the  end  that  suffocates  the 
users  and  kills  the  makers.  The  Swedes  are  chemists; 
also  mechanics,  and  found  that  chlorate  of  potash  was  a 
better  fulminate  for  that  purpose.  They  make  matches 
for  the  world  and  will  continue  to  do  so,  just  as  they 
do  some  other  things  of  the  kind,  if  they  do  not  'choke 
their  manufactures  by  some  mistaken  commercial  polity. 
Why  there  is  an  armory  here,  inland  300  miles,  making 
Springfield  muskets  the  same  as  are  made  in  Springfield, 
and  with  the  same  tools.  I  happen  to  know  they  have, 


46  NOTES     BY    A     STUDENT. 

just  now?  a  large  order  from  the  Turkish  government. 
They  have  a  cannon  factory,  or  an  ordnance  works,  400 
years  old}  at  Finspong.  I  have  seen  it;  and  at  Sandvik 
there  was  a  Bessemer  plant  for  steel  about  as  soon  as 
Sir  Henry  got  his  process  perfected.  Just  sharpen  that 
pencil  of  yours  at  both  ends.  I  propose  to  fill  up  that 
book  for  some  pages  to  come. 

"These  large  wooden  buildings  down  along  the  river 
there,  and  one  or  two  on  the  other  side,  are  wood-work 
factories,  where  is  made  joiner  work  for  London,  Paris, 
Berlin — in  short,  for  everywhere ;  also  finished  houses 
to  be  taken  down,  packed  and  set  up  again  where  wanted. 
You  are  thinking  now  of  what  is  called  at  home  a  plan- 
ing mill.  Yes,  in  one  sense,  but  with  a  difference.  Go 
down  there  and  you  will  find  an  architect's  room.  You 
will  find  a  staff  of  complete  draughtsmen.  All  the 
machines  will  be  of  the  best — all  the  work  too.  There 
will  be  drawings  there  from  Paris  for  house  work,  draw- 
ings from  Hamburg,  Vienna,  Berlin,  Stockholm — in  fact, 
everywhere,  and  just  outside,  in  that  "red  annex,"  on 
this  side,  you  will  find  something  with  a  wonderful 
meaning,  not  to  be*  found  in  the  world  beside.  You 
will  want  two  pages  for  that." 

My  uncle  was  serious.  That  "red  annex"  may  require 
a  page  or  two,  but  some  other  things  first.  We  went  to 
the  hotel  and  had  a  suite  of  rooms  assigned  to  us — two 
large  and  one  small  one.  The  ceilings  were  about  16  feet 
high,  otherwise  everything  French,  or  Franco-German 
in  style.  The  hotel  economy  seemed  to  be  on  the  co- 
operative plan.  No  one  seemed  to  own  or  manage  it, 
and  the  business  of  the  house  seemed  to  be  done  by  the 
porter,  who  represented  alike  the  guests  and  the  hotel. 
He  was  interpreter,  business  agent,  banker,  and  more— 


NOTES    BY    A    STUDENT.  47 

a  general  factotum.  Whether  he  ever  slept,  or  if  there 
were  ''two  of  him,"  I  could  not  make  out.  We  had  a 
fire  made,  and  here  goes  another  page  on  that  matter: 
— I  was  absorbed  in  the  fire  making,  but 
my  uncle  gave  it  no  attention  except  to  say,  * '  Tech,  keep 
a  weather  eye  on  the  'kakelung, '  "  pointing  to  what  I 
thought  was  a  cupboard.  It  was  about  thirty  inches 
wide  by  two  feet  the  other  way,  ten  to  twelve  feet  high, 
covered  with  fine  porcelain  plates,  polished  brass  doors 
at  the  bottom,  also  at  the  sides. 

The  girl  who  brought  the  wood  opened  the  lower  doors, 
disclosing  a  set  of  inner  doors  and  a  flue  in  the  center 
about  twelve  inches  square.  In  this  she  set  the  wood  up 
on  end  until  the  flue  was  full,  and  then  fired  the  lot, 
shut  the  brass  doors  and  sat  down  to  wait. 

In  a  few  minutes  the  fire  was  roaring,  and  in  fifteen 
minutes  was  burned  out.  The  girl  then  closed  all  doors 
tight,  and  also  a  damper  at  the  top,  cutting  off  all 
draught.  That  act  over,  I  looked  up  to  my  uncle  for  ex- 
planation. 

"You  are  wondering,"  said  he,  "where  the  effect  is 
coming  in.  Just  wait  awhile,  and  while  waiting  imagine 
that  bunch  of  wood  burned  in  an  American  stove,  or  in 
an  English  grate.  That  wood  contained  a  certain  quan- 
tity of  heat  units.  In  our  country  they  would  all  be  out 
of  the  top  of  the  chimney  now.  In  this  case  they  are  all 
in  the  room  yet,  as  you  will  see  presently,  and  will  re- 
main here?  as  you  will  find  further  on.  What  you  are 
observing  is  concrete  common  sense,  as  you  will  con- 
clude some  day. 

' '  The  flue  in  that  stove  is  60  feet  long.  The  heat  from 
that  fuel  when  it  escaped  was  not  more  than  150  degrees, 
perhaps  not  that.  You  can  hold  your  hand  in  the  flue 


48  NOTES    BY    A     STUDENT. 

and  there  is  a  little  door  up  there  by  the  damper  to  see 
how  hot  the  gases  are  by  a  thermometer.  All  the  heat 
in  that  wood  is  in  that  stove.  It  will  come  out  directly, 
and  there  will  be  a  fair  part  of  it  left  here  tomorrow." 

On  examination  I  found  the  porcelain  plates  warm 
at  certain  parts  and  warming  elsewhere,  and  in  one 
hour  the  whole  room  had  a  genial  temperature.  My  uncle 
showed  me  how  to  stow  my  damp  shoes  in  the  side 
doors  of  the  kakelung  (lime-oven) ,  and  I  am  a  convert. 
Let  it  be  written  down  in  the  great  record  of  human 
conceits,  that  the  colder  a  country  is,  the  less  fuel  is 
burned,  and  that  in  all  these  patent  contrivances  for 
heating  and  choking  people,  in  which  we  excel,  there  is 
not  one  to  compare  with  the  common  sense  Swedish  kake- 
lung. Heat  here  is  a  commodity,  costs  money,  and  is 
turned  on  like  gas  and  water.  The  gauge  of  loss  is  ven- 
tilation. That  too:  is  a  commodity  here  in  winter,  I 
am  told  by  my  uncle;  but  our  stay  will  not  reach  the 
cold  period — at  least,  I  hope  not.  Salt  water  frozen 
eleven  feet  deep  may  be  a  curious  thing  to  see,  but  I 
can  manage  by  reading  about  it. 

My  uncle  says  he  will  give  me  a  start  around  in  the 
town,  and  then  go  out  to  an  island  place  to  seek  some  old 
friend  of  his,  while  I  "do  the  town,"  as  he  calls  it.  It 
is  not  a  big  town,  but  it  is  the  finest  one  I  have  ever 
seen  in  many  ways.  It  is  principally  of  granite,  built 
on  piles  driven  into  a  substratum  of  mud;  canals  of 
fresh  water  in  the  principal  streets,  and  no  mean  houses 
at  all. 

I  am  curious  to  know  respecting  that  "red  annex," 
with  so  much  significance.  There  is  something  there 
of  importance.  My  uncle  does  not  joke  about  such 
things,  but  I  have  not  the  least  idea  of  what  he  meant. 


NOTES    BY    A     STUDENT.  49 

—The  Red  Annex,  mentioned  in  my  last 
notes,  has  been  investigated,  and  instead  of  containing, 
as  I  supposed,  some  peculiar  machinery,  there  was  only 
a  squad  of  boys,  ranging  from  five  to  fifteen  years  of 
age.  They  were  orphans,  and  I  was  not  long  in  finding 
out  what  my  uncle  was  hinting  at.  These  boys  are  joint 
"wards"  of  the  government  and  of  the  works  with 
which  their  building  is  connected,  and  the  scheme  of 
their  care  and  education  is  one  worthy  of  the  sagacity 
these  northern  nations  have  given  evidence  of  in  their 
social  economy. 

The  boys  are  taken  by  the  government  and  domiciled 
in  the  Red  Annex,  under  a  contract  with  the  firm  or 
company  owning  the  factory.  The  factory  furnishes 
buildings,  heating  and  food.  The  government  furnishes 
instruction,  in  the  way  of  schooling,  maintains  discipline, 
and  conducts  the  moral  part.  The  works  furnish  im- 
plements and  material  for  working,  and  the  two  go  on 
together. 

The  boys  make  toys,  baskets,  rugs  out  of  pine  shav- 
ings, and  a  hundred  more  small  things  of  wood  or 
iron  that  do  not  require  much  skill.  There  are  forges, 
work  benches  and  the  usual  paraphernalia  of  a  shop, 
but  mostly  of  a  miniature  kind.  The  food  is  plain,  very 
plain,  but  wholesome  and  enough.  The  work  is  also 
plenty,  and  there  is  no  idle  time  in  this  embryo  shop. 
Discipline  is  kind,  but  like  the  laws  of  the  Medes  and 
Persians  is  inflexible. 

The  main  point  of  all,  however,  is  a  romantic  one. 
The  energy  and  success  of  all  human  efforts  depend 
upon  some  end  in  view?  some  goal  to  be  attained,  and 
there  is  here  such  an  object.  Between  the  school  and  the 
works  is  a,  mysterious  door  through  which  the  orphans 


50  NOTES    BY    A    STUDENT. 

after  certain  qualifications,  pass  on  into  the  works  and 
become  full  apprentices.  To  gain  an  entrance  at  this 
door  is  the  dream  of  all.  For  that  object  no  labor  is 
too  hard,  no  effort  too  great.  The  mysterious  door  is 
there  in  view,  a  perpetual  talisman,  and  as  a  moral 
agent  has  more  power  than  all  the  mottoes,  maxims, 
lectures  and  the  like  that  were  ever  invented. 

It  is  a  fact  there  present  within  grasp,  and  means  a 
great  change  of  life,  more  privilege  and  elevation  to 
a  new  sphere,  in  short,  is,  as  my  uncle  claims  the  most 
ingenious  educational  expedient  the  world  has  ever  in- 
vented. 

After  passing  the  "Red  Annex"  and  his  term  in  the 
works,  the  boy  or  man  goes  out  into  the  world  an  edu- 
cated mechanic,  an  independent  man,  to  add  to  the  work- 
ing force  of  the  Nation.  He  has  not,  at  any  stage,  been 
a  charge  upon  the  country  that  is,  felt  or  worth  con- 
sidering. He  has  not  suffered  from  being  an  orphan, 
indeed  the  reverse  in  many  cases. 

— I  find  here  a  wonderful  number  of  things 
of  a  similar  nature  that  could  be  written  about,  some  of 
them  technical,  as  will  appear,  but  for  the  present  will 
lay  them  aside.  The  factory  was  a  curious  one  in  many 
ways.  The  timber,  which  was  all  received  as  logs,  was 
small,  crooked,  and  such  as  would  be  called  "culls"  at 
home  but  out  of  it  was  made  the  most  perfect  joiner 
work  that  I  had  ever  seen.  The  knots  were  like  the 
spots  on  Joseph's  coat,  and  in  order  to  secure  panels 
for  doors,  clear  of  knots,  they  had  to  be  bored  out  with 
"bung  saws"  and  cores  driven  in  the  holes.  In  sawing, 
the  logs  are  not  as  with  us  guided  by  carriages,  but  are 
sawed  with  grain  and  shape,  by  gang  saws  with  con- 
tinuous or  roller  feed. 


51 


The  board  or  plank,  no  matter  how  crooked  when 
sawn,  becomes  straight  when  piled  up  and  seasoned. 
The  saws  are  thin,  not  more  than  twelve  gauge.  They 
run  at  high  speed  but  as  the  feed  is  slow  the  sawing  is 
smooth  and  accurate.  All  sawing  of  whatever  kind,  ex- 
cept, perhaps,  scroll  sawing,  is  done  better  than  at  home, 
with  thinner  saws,  truer  and  fast  enough.  The  finish- 
ing processes,  that  is,  the  joiner  processes,  I  have  made 
copious  notes  of  and  will  write  them  out  in  due  time. 

—  My  uncle  came  in  from  Marstrand  on 
a  fine  little  steamer  of  the  Swedish  type,  late  in  the 
evening,  that  is,  late  by  the  clock.  The  sun  is  no  guide 
here  as  to  time.  He  gets  in  about  twenty  hours  of  ser- 
vice above  the  horizon  in  this  latitude,  and  a  little  fur- 
ther up,  in  Sweden,  stays  up  all  night  for  a  few  days 
in  June.  It  seems  queer  to  go  out  at  11  P.  M.  and  sit 
down  to  read  a  newspaper.  Marstrand  is  a  kind  of 
summer  bathing  place  about  twenty  miles  out  in  the 
"Skargord"  (rock  garden),  as  the  Swedes  call  it.  The 
whole  coast  for  miles  out  to  sea  is  sprinkled  with  rocks, 
the  surface  being  about  two-thirds  water  and  one-third 
granite,  and  navigation  here  becomes  an  art. 

The  little  steamers  are  seen  everywhere,  taking  the 
place  of  omnibuses  with  us.  They  are  cheap?  complete 
and  ingenious,  all  of  the  screw  type  and  built  of  iron. 
they  are  reversed  with  an  eccentric  that  is  mounted  on. 
a  shell  with  a  spiral  key  or  feather  that  throws  the 
eccentric  forward  or  back  about  thirty  degrees  to  the 
"angle  of  advance"  each  way,  and  the  engines  have 
less  pieces  than  any  reversing  ones  I  have  ever  seen. 

My  uncle  was  in  fine  humor  when  he  came  in,  and 
busy  contending  with  a  Scotchman  concerning  drinking 
in  Swedenz  and  laid  down  the  facts  about  as  follows: 


52  NOTES    BY    A    STUDENT. 

"There  are  no  teetotal  humbugs  here,  no  horrid  ex- 
amples printed  on  tracts,  moral  lectures  and  the  rest, 
nothing  of  the  kind,  but,  instead,  a  law  that  regulates 
the  matter  and  forces  the  rum  trade  to  be  respectable. 
This  country,  like  all  other  northern  ones,  has  been 
cursed  with  drunkenness,  especially  among  the  peas- 
antry and  the  poor.  Their  liquors  are  usually  only  a 
remove  from  vitriol  in  strength,  and  the  climate  creates 
an  appetite  for  alcohol  as  fuel.  They  fired  up  in  a 
fearful  way,  up  to  and  beyond  human  endurance.  The 
surplus  energy  was  not  expended,  as  in  Ireland,  in 
cracking  heads,  or  as  in  America  by  raising  sheol.  It 
produced  joy  first  and  then  stupefaction. 

"The  Government  stepped  in  and  took  the  liquor 
traffic  in  charge.  You  have  heard  of  the  'Gothenburg 
Law.'  That  means  that  only  responsible  and  respect- 
able people  must  sell  liquor,  and  must  sell  it  only  in  a 
respectable  place,  and  if  any  one  wants  to  drink  they 
must  do  it  in  a  respectable  way.  The  least  abuse  or 
infraction  of  the  law  means  a  revocal  of  the  license  and 
some  other  person  is  appointed. 

"There  are  commissioners  of  some  kind  that  have  the 
whole  matter  in  charge,  and  they  keep  it  in  charge.  No 
liquor,  no  rows;  no  rows,  no  lawyers  and  police  ma- 
chinery, why  you  can  hang  your  coat  on  the  bridge  there 
and  you  will  find  it  to-morrow  morning  just  where  you 
left  it." 

The  honesty  of  the  people  in  these  Scandinavian  coun- 
tries, especially  in  the  northern  or  inland  regions,  is 
a  familiar  theme  with  my  uncle.  He  had,  many  a  time 
before  our  coming  here,  told  me  of  the  absence  of  crime 
and  absence  of  lawyers,  which  he  seems  to  think  are 
either  a  sequence  or  cause  of  disturbance. 


NOTES   BY   A    STUDENT.  53 

One  of  his  "  lectures, "  which  I  noted  down  and  which 
I  expect  to  hear  again,  is  in  substance  as  follows : 

"Lawyers,  courts,  contention,  thievery,  murder,  crime 
and  the  rest,  of  which  there  is  eternal  preaching,  teach- 
ing and  scolding,  is  not  the  normal  or  natural  state  of 
people.  Look  at  Gothenburg.  You  may  walk  until  you 
are  tired  to  hunt  up  a  lawyer's  sign.  Never  heard  of 
but  two  there,  and  they  have  nothing  to  do  in  the  way 
of  criminal  practice,  except  to  defend  foreign  sailors. 
They  have  a  prison  there  with  about  twenty  convicts. 
No  one  gets  in  there  unlesss  they  belong  there,  and  no 
one  gets  out  of  there  until  the  end  of  their  sentence, 
unless  to  be  buried,  and  most  of  them  get  buried.  People 
don't  fool  with  law  here.  That  is  a  settled  matter.  It 
moves  like  the  tides.  You  cannot  go  to  law  here  if  you 
want  to  in  any  civil  case,  but  the  first  thing  must  be 
arbitration  by  a  governmental  or  appointed  commission 
of  respectable  citizens.  These  act  like  a  court,  less  the 
humbuggery  of  one.  There  are  no  technicalities,  habeas 
corpus  and  the  rest,  only  common  sense  and  finding  out 
the  facts.  Nearly  all  disputes  end  here  and  there  are 
no  fees  to  pay. 

"Such  an  institution  in  England  or  America  would 
save  one  third  of  the  nation's  revenue.  They  have  to 
save  it  in  Sweden,  they  have  not  got  it  to  spend,  and 
don't  want  to  spend  it  in  this  way  if  they  had.  Some- 
times the  Criminal  Court  in  Gothenburg  is  not  opened 
in  a  whole  year,  and  this  in  a  city  of  75,000  people. 
Talk  about  civilization.  Goths  and  Vandals !  better  take 
lessons  from  them.  They  have  hammered  out  Repub- 
lican Government,  self  denial  and  true  courage  into 
various  people  of  the  earth:  and  have  still  on  hand  a 
store  of  good  qualities  that  may  be  imitated. ' ' 


54  NOTES    BY    A    STUDENT. 

I  have  found  out  since  here  that  there  is  a  good  deal 
of  affinity  as  well  as  mixture  between  the  Scotch  and 
Scandinavian  people.  They  live  on  opposite  and  not 
distant  sides  of  the  North  Sea,  and  once,  or  indeed  many 
times,  were  "mixed  up"  in  war  matters.  The  Faroe, 
Shetland,  and  other  islands  have  people  mostly  Scandi- 
navian in  lineage,  and  the  language  is,  I  am  told,  a 
Norse  patois,  so  my  uncle  has,  no  doubt,  inherited  some 
of  his  opinions  of  Northern  nations. 

—We  went  around  to  visit  the  Slojd 
school  here  in  Gothenburg,  and  the  name  calls  for  a 
digression.  The  letter  "j"  in  the  word  is  not  the  grat- 
ing Latin  or  French  one  that  sets  one's  teeth  on  edge, 
but  is  simply  "i,"  long.  They  call  it  "i"  and  put  a 
dot  over  it.  When  I  say  "i,"  don't  understand  that 
letter  in  our  English  tongue,  which  of  all  other  letters 
is  the  most  awkward  to  pronounce — a  sound  that  is  un- 
natural if  not  repulsive.  I  mean  long  "i,"  nonexistent 
as  a  sound,  I  believe,  in  any  other  language.  This  let- 
ter is  "e"  long  in  all  tongues  but  our  own,  so  "j"  is 
simply  "i,"  or  "e"  long  in  Swedish,  and  what  it  is 
for  no  one  can  find  out. 

This  explanation  I  make  on  behalf  of  those  poor  wits 
who  make  jokes  on  such  names  as  "Bjornson,"  which  is 
spelled  as  rationally  as  "Smith"  or  "Jones."  Bjorn 
is  "bear/'  and  Bjornson  is  the  son  of  a  bear,  or  of  a 
man  by  the  name  of  "Bear2"  to  be  more  exact.  In 
order  to  understand  this  matter,  one  must  keep  in  mind 
that  Scandinavian  etymology  and  syntax  are  rational 
and  systematic,  and  English  are  neither.  I  could  go  on 
and  show  how  "i"  or  "j"  became  metamorphosed  into 
that  saw-filing  sound  we  give  to  the  letter,  but  it  is  of 
no  use,  and  what  is  of  more  interest  to  note  is  that 


NOTES    BY    A    STUDENT.  55 

Scandinavian  names  always,  or  nearly  always,  mean 
some  natural  object,  such  as  mountains,  rivers,  streams, 
animals,  and  so  on,  while  in  Saxon  lineage  we  have 
handicraft  such  as  weaver,  carpenter,  smith,  and  the 
like.  Scandinavian  names  are  an  interesting  study, 
and  will  be  found,  in  nearly  all  cases,  to  contain  a 
"root"  as  above.  Berg,  (mountain)  ;  strom,  (stream)  ; 
lof,  (leaf)  ;  orn,  (eagle)  ;  ek,  (oak),  are  examples. 

The  alphabet  contains  twenty-eight  letters,  counting 
the  modified  vowels  a,  6  and  o.  The  latter  is  long  o. 
These  twenty-eight  letters  have  one  sound  each,  no 
more,  no  less,  and  where  an  assemblage  of  them  makes 
up  a  word,  one  knows  what  to  call  that  word,  if  they 
can  pronounce  it,  which  is  by  no  means  certain. 

Some  years  ago  it  was  discovered  that  the  letter  "c" 
was  superfluous  in  the  Swedish  language,  as  it  is  in 
English,  and  it  was  cast  out.  The  academy  of  some- 
thing, at  Stockholm,  requested  all  writers  and  printers 
to  omit  this  letter,  and  the  thing  was  done.  In  America, 
or  England,  the  people  would  at  once  have  doubled  the 
number,  if  such  a  request  had  been  made.  This  useless 
letter  "c,"  which  has  in  English  the  sound  of  "k"  and 
of  "s"  but  no  sound  of  its  own,  had  smuggled  itself  into 
about  fifty  words  of  the  Swedish  language,  taking  the 
place  of  "k"  at  the  beginning  of  words,  in  which  con- 
nection only  it  was  found.  It  is  gone  now  in  Sweden, 
and  let  us  hope  will  be  gone  some  day  in  English  as  well. 
— Reverting  to  schools  in  Sweden,  my  own 
notes,  while  they  may  be  in  better  diction,  do  not  com- 
pare to  my  uncle's  comments  when  he  can  be  persuaded 
to  talk.  It  seems  this  school  matter  has  interested  him 
in  some  way,  at  any  rate  he  understands  it,  as  will  ap- 


56  NOTES    BY   A    STUDENT. 

pear  from  the  following,  jotted  down  from  one  of  his 
impromptu  ' '  lectures ' '  : 

* '  Schools  ? ' '  said  he.  ' '  Any  one  who  visited  the 
Vienna  Exhibition,  or  any  other  exhibition  for  that 
matter,  where  there  were  school  exhibits,  will  know  what 
schools  are  in  Sweden.  Why,  a  child  learns  its  letters 
and  to  spell  in  four  languages  all  at  the  same  time,  and 
learns  the  whole  much  better  than  one  and  almost  as 
easy.  The  girls  learn  to  make  their  own  clothes  and 
to  make  bread,  as  well  as  the  piano  and  deportment. 
At  two  in  the  afternoon  they  sing.  Sing!  I  say,  not 
'squawk.'  Sing  so  that  visitors  come  to  hear  the  music, 
just  as  they  would  go  to  a  concert.  I  am  speaking  of 
elementary  schools  now.  At  some  hour  in  the  day  the 
boys  are  called  out  for  'drill'  in  a  gymnasium,  by  the 
'Ling'  system  they  call  it,  after  some  man  who  con- 
nected calisthenics  to  science.  There  is  no  rough  and 
tumble  business,  but  strict  drill,  by  an  officer  of  the 
army  usually,  who  is  detailed  for  that  purpose.  It  is 
a  wonderful  performance,  better  than  a  theatre,  and 
of  infinitely  more  use.  I  am  not  a  schoolmaster,  nor 
the  custodian  of  boys:  but  I  know  a  school  when  I  see 
one,  and  they  can  be  seen  here.  These  people  are 
housed  in  the  winter  in  close  rooms.  Ventilation  is 
estimated  by  the  cubic  foot;  a  foot  of  air  and  a  foot  of 
cold,  they  come  in  together,  but,  nevertheless,  as  you 
may  see,  the  people  are  sturdy  and  strong.  Besides  the 
elementary  schools,  or  the  secular  schools,  there  is  in 
every  town  of  any  size  a  technological  school,  and  filled 
up  too.  Take  Jonkoping  for  example,  an  inland  town, 
on  Lake  Wetter,  with  about  ten  thousand  people. 
There  is  there  a  technical  school  or  college  equal  to 
some  of  our  best,  so  are  there  all  over  Sweden,  and  have 


NOTES    BY    A    STUDENT.  57 

to  be.  What  are  these  people  to  do  on  this  poor  penin- 
sula that  produces  mainly  granite,  stunted  pine  trees 
and  ice,  with  a  few  cereals,  such  as  rye  and  oats?  The 
people  must  go  'outside'  to  hunt  for  a  living,  and  to 
do  this  must  know  something.  In  former  times  they 
were  driven  out  by  law,  that  is,  a  large  part  of  the  boys 
were,  who  found  the  law  congenial  because  it  gave  a 
kind  of  warrant  for  robbing  the  coasts  of  the  English 
Channel  and  everywhere  else  they  could  reach  with 
their  boats.  This  kind  of  business  and  recreation  being 
ended,  they  must  have  schools  at  this  day,  and  then 
when  they  go  out  into  the  world  they  soon  learn  the 
practical  part  of  what  they  have  already  the  rudiments 
and  theory.  Those  that  learn  trades  here  stay  at  home, 
and  now-a-days  very  few  but  the  peasants  or  poor 
farmers  leave  this  country.  By  the  way,  it  is  a  strange 
thing,  and  a  fortunate  one,  too,  that  the  poorer  a 
country  is  the  stronger  the  people's  attachment  to  it. 
This  poor  frozen  land,  with  night  twenty-one  hours 
long  in  winter,  and  land  that  an  American  farmer 
would  not  think  of  cultivating,  is  to  the  Swedes  home, 
and  beautiful.  Gamla  Sverige  is  the  refrain  of  their 
songs,  the  subject  of  their  poems  and  traditions.  The 
particular  blessed  spot  of  the  earth. ' ' 

— The  foregoing,  taken  in  all,  is  the 
longest  and  most  moderate  speech  my  uncle  has  made. 
It  is  owing  to  the  somnolent  environment  of  the  coun- 
try. No  one  is  in  a  hurry  here.  There  is  not  quite  as 
much  "to-morrow"  as  with  our  Latin  friends,  but  near 
it.  To-morrow  we  start  through  the  Gotha  canal  for 
Stockholm  on  one  of  the  little  iron  steamers  that  run 
in  that  trade.  There  are  about  a  hundred  of  them,  and 
among  these  a  dozen  or  more  fine  packets  for  passengers. 


58  NOTES    BY    A    STUDENT. 


— At  nine  o'clock  we  cast  off,  and  our 
little  steamer  began  ascending  the  Gotha  River,  or  a 
branch  of  it,  because  when  we  were  fifteen  to  twenty 
miles  out  we  came  to  a  high  hill,  on  which  was  an  old 
castle  in  ruins,  and  on  passing  around  that,  came  to 
where  half  of  the  river  struck  off  in  a  northern  direc- 
tion to  the  ocean  by  a  shorter  route.  Some  farther  on 
we  came  to  the  first  rapids  and  went  through  some 
locks,  or  " sluices"  as  they  are  called  here.  This  fall  is 
a  small  one,  of  only  ten  feet  or  so,  but  in  an  hour  more 
we  ran  into  a  great  pool  overhung  and  darkened  with 
timber,  and  resounding  with  a  roar  like  Niagara.  This 
was  the  foot  of  the  Trollhatta  (witch's  hat) ,  the  greatest 
waterfall  in  Europe,  where  80,000  cubic  feet  per  second 
come  tumbling  over  ledges  for  a  height  of  109  feet. 
The  whole  rapids  are  5,000  feet  long,  but  there  is  one 
clean  jump  at  the  head  of  40  feet  or  more.  It  is  a  re- 
markable place.  Wild,  weird,  noisy  and  grand  will  do 
as  adjectives,  but  what  astonished  me  most  was  to  see 
our  little  steamer,  which  we  had  abandoned,  slowly 
"climbing  the  hill"  at  a  right  angle  to  the  river.  We 
followed  up  the  boat,  fearing  it  might  diverge  off  into 
the  country,  but  it  kept  straight  on,  lift  after  lift,  until 
it  was  110  feet  above  the  dark  pool  from  which  it 
started.  We  all  clambered  up  the  hill  and  on  board 
again,  and  started  in  the  first  stretch  of  artificial  cut,  or 
canal  proper.  The  whole  of  this  great  work  of  the 
sluices  is  not  made  in  the  usual  way  of  built  up  ma- 
sonry. It  is  "carved  out  of  the  solid  granite." 

Now  that  we  are  in  the  real  canal,  I  will  explain 
something  of  it.  It  was  not  a  very  rapid  work.  They 
were  400  years  in  making  it,  or  a  part  of  it  at  the  eastern 
or  Baltic  end.  The  western  end,  from  Lake  Wenner 


NOTES    BY    A    STUDENT.  59 

to  the  North  Sea,  was  completed  in  1800,  or  nearly  300 
years  after  the  scheme  was  first  considered,  and  after 
more  than  100  years  of  actual  work,  some  of  which  was 
lost,  because  there  is  a  lot  of  unfinished  cutting  at  Troll- 
hatta,  up  alongside  the  falls,  that  was  abandoned.  The 
canal  may  be  called  a  series  of  links,  or  sections,  con- 
necting lakes.  Sweden  is  covered  with  lakes,  and  con- 
tains the  two  largest  in  Europe,  Wenner  and  Wetter, 
through  both  of  which  the  line  of  the  canal  passes, 

The  extreme  altitude  attained  is  300  feet,  at  Viken. 
There  are  74  locks,  37  on  each  side,  and  they  are  "there 
to  stay."  Some  of  the  work  looks  queer  and  primitive 
to  modern  eyes,  but,  for  the  time,  was  done  as  well  as 
human  knowledge  would  permit.  Tel  ford,  the  great 
English  canal  engineer,  was,  for  a  time,  engaged  on  the 
work.  There  were,  of  course,  many  engineers.  It 
takes  quite  a  number  to  last  out  a  400-year  job  like  that. 

It  is  350  miles  or  so  by  canal  from  Gothenburg  to 
Stockholm,  which  is  250  more  than  I  inferred  from  the 
distances  set  down  here.  Swedish  miles,  contrary  to  the 
usual  laws  of  expansion  and  contraction,  have  in  this 
cold  latitude  lengthened  out  to  six  times  our  English 
one,  a  good  thing  to  keep  in  mind  when  one  is  traveling 
here.  The  time  is  about  three  days  in  all,  by  steamer, 
and  the  trip  is  one  of  the  most  enjoyable  that  exists. 
The  meals  or  food  is  in  a  measure  a  la  carte,  and  you 
keep  your  own  account  in  a  book  hung  up  for  that  pur- 
pose. At  the  end  of  the  journey  you  foot  up  your  own 
account,  and  pay  the  Mam'selle  in  charge.  There  is 
no  cheating,  or  thought  of  cheating.  There  is  110  energy 
to  waste  on  such  things  here.  It  is  not  agreeable.  It 
don't  pay,  as  we  would  say.  The  labor  and  anxiety  of 
bargaining  and  watching  to  avoid  cheating  is  a  heavy 


60  NOTES   BY    A    STUDENT. 

load,  and  these  people  seem  to  escape  it  somehow,  as 
my  uncle  has  already  explained.  It  would  be  a  curious 
problem  if  we  could  know  just  what  part  of  human 
effort  is  directed  to  the  avoidance  of  being  cheated.  It 
is  a  considerable  part,  and  includes  much  more  than  we 
suppose. 

The  money  here  is  at  first  a  little  confusing,  like  the 
"reis"  of  Portugal,  but  when  learned  it  is  a  very  plain 
and  sensible  system.  The  unit  is  a  "kroner,"  worth 
twenty-six  cents  of  our  money.  This  kroner  is  divided 
into  100  parts  called  '  *  ore " ;  so  that  when  one  is  in- 
formed that  a  cigar  is  fifty  ore,  the  statement  calls  for 
surprise.  There  are  little  silver  coins  of  five  and  ten 
ore,  also  copper  coins  of  small  value,  but  the  main  cur- 
rency is  paper  money  of  the  most  sensible  kind  I  have 
ever  seen.  The  bills  of  small  denomination  are  about 
the  size  of  a  common  letter  envelope,  3  by  5  inches,  and 
form  a  convenient  pocket  size.  Their  denomination  is 
indicated  by  unmistakable  marks,  so  there  are  no  errors 
in  counting.  Larger  bills  are  just  double  this  size,  so 
as  to  correspond  when  folded  once. 

I  had  no  trouble  in  paying  accounts,  for,  as  my  uncle 
suggested,  I  hand  over  the  money  at  hand  and  the 
creditor  takes  out  what  is  coming  to  him  and  returns 
the  rest.  No  one  wants  to  cheat  you.  No  one  thinks  of 
such  a  thing. 

This  is  the  strangest  navigation  I  have  ever  seen,  and 
so  remarked  to  my  uncle  as  we  were  entering  Lake 
Wetter.  "Strange,"  said  he,  "you  should  be  here  some 
time  when  a  squall  comes  down  on  this  pot  hole.  Why 
it  picks  the  water  up  and  scatters  it  over  the  hill  sides ! 
You  will  not  see  a  boat  on  this  lake,  and  scarcely  a  sail. 
They  do  not  dare  to  have  them.  Away  yonder  in  the 


NOTES   BY   A    STUDENT.  61 

distance  you  can  see  Jonkoping.  Ten  thousand  people 
there,  and  scarce  a  pleasure  boat  in  the  town.  It  is 
sure  death  to  be  caught  100  yards  from  the  shore  when 
a  squall  comes  down.  Comes  down,  I  say,  that  is  comes 
over  the  mountains  down  on  the  water,  and  sometimes 
strikes  it  flat,  sometimes  the  other  way,  and  at  all  inter- 
mediate angles.  I  have  seen  the  canvas  on  a  small  boat 
out  on  the  coast  at  Gothenburg,  pulled  away  and  stand- 
ing straight  up  in  the  air;  here  it  is  worse." 

I  tried  to  think  what  was  worse,  and  resolved  never 
to  do  any  boating  on  Lake  Wetter. 


CHAPTER    X. 

SWEDISH     OMNIBUSES A     BUSY     KING     WHO     EARNS     HIS 

SALARY HORIZONTAL  SUNSHINE A  LONDON  STEAM- 
BOAT COMPANY TIN-POT  STEAMERS. 


—It  was  not  the  intention  to  set  down  in 
these  notes  any  thing  of  the  ordinary  routine  journal 
kind,  such  as  one  finds  in  books  of  travel,  but  it  is  hard 
to  avoid  the  habit.  It  is  true  that  one  is  bound  to  see 
things  through  the  glasses  of  his  own  occupation  and 
estimate  them  accordingly,  but  then  again  there  is  the 
opposing  fact  that  one  is  apt  to  pride  themselves  most 
on  that  of  which  they  know  the  least.  A  common  news- 
paper correspondent  is  never  so  happy  as  when  he  dips 
into  science  and  machinery  to  dish  up  some  ludicrous 
blunder,  so  by  parity  of  reasoning  a  mechanic  will  want 
to  describe  scenery,  the  morals  and  manners  of  a  people, 
with  other  things  of  which  he  has  made  no  study.  My 
uncle  is  an  exception  to  this  in  two  ways.  He  is  ready 
to  consider  almost  anything,  and  has  considered  almost 


62  NOTES    BY    A    STUDENT. 

everything  before,  so  I  am  proceeding  vicariously  in  a 
great  degree. 

In  Stockholm  we  stayed  at  the  Rydeberg  Hotel. 
Other  people,  not  Swedes,  go  to  the  Grand  Hotel.  We 
wanted  to  see  Swedes  while  here,  so  lodged  accordingly, 
and  I  find  here,  next  following  the  hotel  note,  the  fol- 
lowing set  down  from  my  uncle : 

"Stockholm,"  said  he,  "is  a  center  of  refined  dissipa- 
tion, or,  to  be  more  exact,  is  a  kind  of  large  pleasure 
garden,  open  for  four  months  in  the  summer.  There  is 
commerce  here  of  course,  and  Government  machinery 
of  a  very  effective  kind,  but  the  people  don't  let  either 
of  these  interfere  with  their  pleasures  during  summer 
time.  The  city  has  the  advantage  of  being  half  water, 
and  the  water  has  the  advantage  of  being  half  fresh  and 
half  salt.  That  stream  or  current  coming  through 
under  the  great  bridge  there  is  fresh,  poured  out  from 
a  score  of  lakes  reaching  away  back  inland  a  hundred 
miles  or  more;  turn  around  and  you  are  looking  at  salt 
water.  The  i omnibuses'  are  driven  by  screws,  made  of 
Swedish  iron,  and  are  the  cheapest,  neatest  steam- 
boats in  the  world.  Look  at  the  reversing  gear  when 
you  are  in  one;  the  single  eccentric  is  thrown  to  its 
angle  of  advance,  each  way,  by  a  shell  between  the  eccen- 
tric and  the  shaft,  the  shell  having  a  spiral  slot  to  turn 
the  eccentric,  and  slides  on  a  feather  or  spline  in  the 
shaft.  The  end  of  the  sleeve  is  turned  into  collars  or 
grooves  that  mesh  into  a  pinion,  and  that  is  all.  There 
is  one  piece  where  we  use  three,  and  no  running  joints 
that  wear  out.  If  you  have  room  among  your  baggage 
you  had  better  take  one  of  these  boats  along,  they  cost 
here  just  a  little  more  than  the  iron  is  worth  by  the  ton 
in  England  or  America. 


NOTES    BY    A    STUDENT.  63 


"There  are  parks,  museums,  palaces,  hospitals, 
theaters,  operas,  pictures,  and  punch  here.  The  opera 
is  the  finest  in  Europe,  except  in  Italy.  The  palace,  or 
Government  house,  is  the  largest  in  Europe.  Stock- 
holm is  the  Paris  of  the  north  in  respect  to  pleasure. 
Some  factories  here,  one  machine  works  of  goodly  size, 
but  even  these  and  other  business  seems  to  be  done  for 
amusement. 

''The  King  of  Norway  and  Sweden  lives  over  there 
in  that  immense  building  called  the  Palace;  that  is,  has 
his  rooms  there  and  works  there.  Works,  I  say,  because 
Oscar  II  has  few  subjects,  except  laborers,  that  do  more 
work  than  he,  and  why  not?  A  rusty  king  is  of  no  use. 
This  one  here  will  not  become  oxidized  for  want  of  use. 
To  begin  with  he  is  the  most  learned  man  on  a  throne 
in  Europe,  or  in  the  world  for  that  matter.  He  is  a  scien- 
tific man,  a  linguist  and  scholar,  a  writer,  painter  and 
poet,  and  knows  how  hydraulic  cement  is  made.  I 
heard  him  lecture  on  the  subject  one  time,  and  have  not 
the  least  doubt  of  his  ability  to  draw  up  plans  for  a 
bridge  as  well  as  for  a  state  paper." 

— Some  days  here  has  proved  the  cor- 
rectness of  my  uncle's  "facts/'  and  added  a  great 
many  more,  but  the  time  of  departure  comes,  and  it  has 
just  been  decided  that  we  will  not  go  to  Cronstadt  and 
St.  Petersburg  because  it  is  too  hot;  just  think  of  that 
at  59-20  North.  It  is  not  heat  so  much  as  glare.  The 
sun  does  not  get  up  overhead  so  as  to  be  shielded  with 
roofs,  hats  and  umbrellas,  but  "comes  on"  horizontally 
— goes  sweeping  around  the  horizon,  giving  out  an  in- 
tense light  and  heat  too  that  is  insufferable  to  a  stranger. 
You  see,  on  the  streets,  hundreds  of  white  and  yellow 
umbrellas,  carried  with  the  stick  pointing  at  the  sun. 


64  NOTES  BY  A  STUDENT. 

They  are  worn  as  Sancho  Panza  did  his  front  shield, 
and  at  the  back,  as  he  did  his  other  shield,  or  pointed  to 
the  right  or  left. 

I  got  out  of  my  uncle  another  of  his  lectures  by  ask- 
ing how  we  would  travel  from  here  and  where  go  when 
we  started. 

''I  want/'  said  he,  "to  show  you,  while  in  this  old 
country,  some  water  service  to  stop  your  boasting  of 
American  steamboats.  A  steamboat  and  steamship  are 
very  different  things  remember.  On  rivers  or  inland 
waters,  including  even  large  lakes,  you  can  build  a  first- 
class  hotel  on  a  vessel,  but  you  can  not  send  such  a  hotel 
to  sea,  so  in  comparing,  here  or  anywhere,  such  service 
you  must  keep  to  deep  water  vessels,  or  the  other  kind. 

"We  will  go  from  here  down  the  Baltic  in  a  steamer, 
not  exactly  a  deep  sea  steamer,  but  near  it,  and:  as  I 
think,  one  of  the  best  you  will  find  in  coast  service  in 
Europe.  I  don't  know  what  steamer  it  will  be,  but  the 
service  all  around  here  is  good. 

"From  Copenhagen  to  Christiana,  from  Christiana 
to  Malmo  and  Liibeck,  Stockholm  to  Baltic  ports,  indeed 
all  around,  you  will  find  service  that  puts  the  Steam 
Navigation  Company  of  London  to  shame.  This  latter 
Company  that  owns  fifty  or  more  steamers  going  around 
their  own  coast  and  to  ports  on  the  German  Ocean  are 
tubs  in  comparison  to  the  steamers  owned  here.  They 
carry  hogs,  cattle,  sheep  and  passengers  on  the  main 
deck,  and  are  suitable  for  the  quadruped  part  only. 
From  Hamburg  to  London,  for  example,  they  have  a 
way  of  contracting  "to  furnish  food,"  well  knowing 
that  no  one,  not  even  an  "old  salt,"  has  stomach  enough 
to  eat  on  these  steamers.  They  are  worked  commer- 
cially for  gain,  and  with  all  possible  disregard  for  pas- 


NOTES   BY   A   STUDENT.  65 

sengers.  Here  it  is  different,  as  you  have  seen  thus  far. 
It  is  more  like  the  American  service,  which  is  the  best 
in  the  world  inland,  and  nearly  non-existant  outland. 
The  whole  depends  on  competition.  There  is  not  a 
company  in  the  world  that  would  not  carry  passengers 
on  scows  and  feed  them  on  beans  if  there  was  a  mo- 
nopoly of  routes.  Passengers  on  the  water  get  decent 
treatment  because  Nature  owns  the  highway.  There 
are  no  franchises  granted  in  the  sea. 

"At  the  end  of  the  American  war,  when  the  Swedes 
had  but  few  vessels  running  to  London,  an  English 
company  put  some  blockade  runners  into  the  Gothen- 
burg trade.  These  steamers  were  of  the  "tin-pot" 
kind,  made  for  one  journey  across  the  Atlantic,  in  the 
Summer,  on  the  assumption  that  one  load  of  cotton 
smuggled  out  would  pay  for  the  boat.  These  steamers 
kept  on  a  little  too  late  one  year,  got  their  decks  cleaned 
off,  including  dirt  and  cattle,  and  were  blown  off  toward 
Iceland.  One  of  them,  by  burning  up  all  her  deck 
hamper  for  fuel,  got  to  the  leeward  of  the  Shetland 
Islands,  a  mere  chance  and  an  only  chance.  The  own- 
ing firm  failed,  as  it  ought  to  have  done  before.  There 
are  not  many  of  these  tin-pot  steamers  around  these 
northern  oceans  now.  All  but  the  very  best  hibernate 
in  the  winter. 

' '  We  often  hear  remarks  condemning  English  builders 
for  constructing  cheap  steamers.  That  is  all  nonsense, 
it  is  the  owner  who  is  to  blame.  We  do  not  blame 
people  for  making  swords,  guns  and  torpedo  boats,  the 
avowed  object  of  which  is  to  kill  people,  not  people  who, 
as  in  the  case  of  a  bad  steamer  can  keep  out  of  her,  but 
those  who  are  marched  up  by  force  to  be  killed  by  such 
weapons.  It  is  true  the  world  has  produced  some  men 


66  NOTES    BY    A    STUDENT. 


and  firms  who  would  not,  under  any  circumstances, 
build  a  tin-pot  steamer,  but  that  was  because  by  refus- 
ing they  got  more  of  the  other  kind  to  build.  Compe- 
tition is  what  produces  good  steamers  and  good  service 
by  them." 


CHAPTER   XI. 

ON      DRAUGHTING SWEDISH      METHODS EUROPEAN      SHOP 

PRACTICE AN  ENGLISH   PLAN   FOR   FORGING   SHEETS. 

HOW  TO  DRAW  A  DUMP  CAR SWEDISH  INK 

PALLETS LUBECK  STEAMERS. 

— The  present  is  as  good  a  place  as  I  will 
find  in  these  notes  to  set  down  some  views  on  draught- 
ing that  have  come  up  since  we  landed  in  this  older 
country.  Here  in  Sweden  especially,  there  are  some 
points  of  interest  to  one  who  has  worried  for  months  to 
know  just  how  machine  drawings  should  be  made,  as  to 
the  scheme,  the  amount  of  tinting,  coloring  and  daub- 
ing that  should  not  be  employed,  and  out  of  it  all,  with 
some  aid  from  my  uncle,  I  have  arrived  at  the  conclu- 
sion, for  one  thing,  that  I  know  very  little  about  the 
subject.  Here  in  Sweden  the  drawings  are  the  prin- 
cipal part  of  a  thing  to  be  made.  The  art  is  a  congenial 
one  to  the  modern  Swede,  who,  very  much  unlike  his 
ancestors,  has  become  scholastic,  wears  gloves  and 
glasses,  and  is  effeminate.  He  is  all  the  time  speaking 
of  his  humble  country,  and  all  the  time  thinking  it  is 
the  greatest  country  in  the  world,  peopled  with  an 
exceptional  race.  I  do  not  like  to  criticize  in  harsh 
lines  a  country  and  people,  one  of  the  best  I  ever  hope 
to  see,  but,  all  the  world  has  faults?  and  here  there  are 


NOTES    BY    A    STUDENT.  67 

the  objections  named  of  a  tendency  to  scholastic  pur- 
suits with  a  kind  of  contempt  for  the  practical  part  of 
things. 

My  uncle,  who  sees  everything,  and  forms  opinions 
about  everything,  says:  "These  Swedes  of  our  day  are 
an  example  of  the  reversal  of  extremes.  People  never 
stop  half  way,  they  slop  over,  so  to  speak.  The  de- 
scendants of  those  hard-headed  old  pirates  that  once 
gloried  in  privations  and  exposure,  have  gone  to  the 
other  extreme  and  do  not  even  have  the  manly  games, 
such  as  hammering  each  other  in  the  face,  smashing 
their  fingers  at  ball  games,  breaking  their  legs  at  foot- 
ball. They  caper  nimbly  to  the  notes  of  a  lute  and 
would  all  be  instantly  smashed  by  Charles  XII,  if  that 
old  chap  would  turn  out  of  his  grave  for  a  second 
term. ' ' 

This,  however,  has  nothing  to  do  with  draughting, 
except  the  national  trend  is  to  do  more  draughting  than 
hard  work.  It  is  well  done — too  well  done,  is  a  waste 
of  time  and  has  no  application  in  construction,  indeed 
rather  the  reverse.  In  England  the  art  is  strained  the 
other  way — is  pure  utility,  and,  as  I  believe,  as  nearly 
right  as  can  be.  They  commonly  use  white  paper,  that 
is,  paper  that  was  white  at  first,  pencil  in  the  work  and 
then  trace  the  sheets  in  a  clear  manner  and  pile  the 
original  sheets  away  as  lumber  or  destroy  them.  The 
lines  are  clear,  in  the  right  place,  just  enough  of  them, 
and  no  * '  mistakes. ' '  No  one  can  describe  what  is  meant 
further  than  to  call  it  practical  and  sufficient. 

Here  in  Sweden  it  is  common  to  work  from  a  center 
line,  each  way,  and  not  uncommon  to  "figure  from  a 
center  line,"  that  is  give  dimensions  from  the  axis, 
which  is  a  piece  of  super-refinement  to  bother  workmen. 


68  NOTES   BY    A    STUDENT. 

Dimensions  are  laid  down  from  the  scale  by  measure- 
ment, and  not  made  up  as  is  common  in  England  and 
America,  mainly  by  computation.  There  is  besides  no 
commercial  scheming  of  things  to  save  expense,  and 
as  to  time,  that  is  not  considered. 

The  cost  of  construction;  even  at  the  low  wages  paid 
and  long  hours  worked,  is  more  than  in  America  or 
England,  and  as  the  workmen  seem  pretty  well  skilled, 
I  imagine  that  most  of  the  prime  cost  account  lodges  in 
the  draughting  and  counting  rooms,  where  there  is 
usually  a  force  about  equal  to  that  in  the  shop.  The 
methods  are  plodding,  and  as  they  say  in  England,  are 
"provincial,"  in  so  far  as  small  implements  and  pro- 
cesses, but  the  work  done  is  good,  and  I  will  say  right 
here,  that  no  bad  work  has  been  seen  since  we  left  home, 
except  a  little  of  what  is  called  merchant  work  in  Eng- 
land, and  that  is  only  rough — very  rough.  In  Belgium, 
Sweden  and  Germany,  indeed  all  over,  there  seems  to 
be  in  iron  fitting  a  tendency  to  extreme  exactness  and 
good  finish. 

To  continue  the  draughting  matter.  I  remember  a 
story  of  my  uncle's,  relating  to  a  skilled  draughtsman 
who  found  himself  stranded  "out  west,"  and  made  ap- 
plication for  work  at  a  jobbing  works  he  came  across. 
He  worked  off  a  small  sheet  in  his  best  style,  and  handed 
it  in  as  an  example.  The  firm  owners  were  much 
pleased  and  astonished,  but  doubted  if  their  people 
could  understand  such  fine  drawings,  and  so  said. 
They  had  some  dumping  cars  to  make,  and  wanted  a 
drawing  for  that.  The  applicant  was  equal  to  the  oc- 
casion and  said  he  would  draw  the  work  without  charge. 
He  went  early  in  the  morning,  hunted  up  a  web  of  52 
in.  Manila  paper,  borrowed  a  trestle  board  from  the 


NOTES    BY    A    STUDENT.  69 

pattern  maker,  and  a  framing  pencil  from  the  carpenter. 
In  an  hour  he  had  ready  a  drawing,  full  size,  fearfully 
and  wonderfully  made ;  figured  with  a  blue  pencil ! 

The  carpenter  would  not  wait  until  the  owners  ar- 
rived to  inspect  the  drawing,  but  carried  it  off  vie  et 
armis,  declaring  it  was  the  best  drawing  he  had  ever 
seen.  The  owners  were  much  pleased  and  the  tramp 
draughtsman  was  at  once  "installed." 

Between  the  first  and  second  drawing  there  is  a  wide 
range  of  degree.  Both  extremes  are  right;  so  are  the 
intermediate  grades,  and  in  finding  out  and  adapting 
lies  the  skill  that  owners  want  in  a  draughting  room. 
The  professors  taught  us  the  higher  method,  and  left  us 
helpless  so  far  as  pencil  sketches  on  wrapping  paper,  a 
kind  of  drawings  necessary  in  all  machine  works. 

In  England  they  have  a  method  of  taking  out  forg- 
ings  that  commends  itself.  Some  one  handy  with  a  pen 
sketches  the  forgings,  free  hand,  or  without  much  at- 
tention to  scale,  with  copying  ink.  The  sheets  are  then 
put  into  a  book  and  press  copied,  the  original  sheets 
which  are  merely  foolscap  paper  are  sent  to  the 
"smithy."  The  drawings  thus  made  look  wonderfully 
well.  The  figuring  is  "writ  loud"  and  very  plain  and 
to  the  "forging"  size,  instead  of,  as  is  common  and  also 
unreasonable,,  leaving  a  smith  to  allow  for  finishing. 
He  is  not  supposed  to  be  skilled  in  that  matter,  more- 
over does  not  know  where  pieces  go,  and  should  never 
be  bothered  with  making  out  finish  sizes  from  rough 
dimensions.  I  was  much  impressed  with  this  method  of 
laying  out  forgings,  and  believe  it  to  be  a  great  step  in 
advance  of  the  old  forging  sheets,  and  much  cheaper, 
also  more  systematic.  At  a  large  works  in  England 
they  let  us  examine  one  of  the  forging  books.  It  was 


70  NOTES    BY    A    STUDENT. 

like  a  ledger,  indexed,  and  in  no  case  did  the  forgings 
for  one  machine  require  more  than  a  page.  There  be- 
ing no  scale  followed,  large  pieces  are  condensed  and 
small  ones  enlarged.  The  figures  set  all  right,  and  such 
figures  I  had  not  seen- before.  They  were  in  imitation 
of  roman  type  and  clear  enough  for — a  blacksmith. 

In  Sweden  there  was  noticed  a  peculiar  kind  of  ink 
dishes  that  call  for  notice.  They  consisted  of  a  me- 
tallic box,  pewter,  I  think,  filled  with  red  wax,  and  a 
curved  glass  dish,  like  the  crystal  of  a  watch,  pressed 
down  into  the  wax  when  it  was  soft.  This  makes  a  good 
strong  job  and  wonderfully  neat;  but  that  is  not  the 
main  point.  When  ink  is  to  be  made  they  breathe  on 
the  bottom  of  the  dish  to  dampen  it  and  then  rub  the 
ink  without  water  until  it  is  complete  as  a  "paste," 
which  is  then  thinned  with  water.  One  would  think 
that  under  some  conditions  there  would  not  be  enough 
moisture  from  the  breath,  perhaps  not,  I  describe  what 
was  seen. 

—The  steamer  down  the  Baltic  was  all 
my  uncle  promised,  and  something  more.  The  engines 
were  new  and  wonderfully  well  made,  the  feathering 
paddles  made  no  jar  and  could  scarcely  be  heard.  The 
boat  was  clean,  swift  and  orderly.  The  food  was  good, 
or  rather  was  everything  wanted,  except  the  "smorgos- 
bord"  which  is  imperative  in  a  Swedish  meal.  It 
means  a  kind  of  preliminary  meal,  eaten  at  a  separate 
table,  and  consists  of  various  odds  and  ends,  such  as 
anchovies,  salted  vegetables,  caviare,  hard  bread,  butter, 
bits  of  cold  meat,  and  mainly  a  glass  of  * '  Branvin ' ' 
(burning  wine)  a  kind  of  native  brandy  corresponding 
to  German  "Kiimmel. "  It  is  a  curious  custom,  easily 


NOTES    BY    A    STUDENT.  71 

learned,  and  has  the  distinction  of  a  name  for  which 
no  etymology  could  be  found. 

We  came  to  Liibeck  in  good  time,  and  of  this  I  will 
write  farther  on. 


CHAPTER     XII. 

NAVIGATING  IN  A  MEADOW HANSE  TOWNS OLD  CHURCHES 

AND  RELICS AN  IRREVERENT  VIEW OLD   COINS  AND 

CABINET  WARE HOLLAND  AND  THE  DUTCH. 


—When  we  got  to  the  foot  of  the  Baltic 
Ocean.  I  wonder  why  it  is  the  ''foot?"  Our  steamer 
was  steered  straight  into  a  meadow!  Away  ahead  we 
could  see  the  chimney  of  another  steamer,  crawling 
through  the  grass,  and  at  intervals  high  poles  or  masts 
traveling  along  in  the  manner  of  a  peripatetic  telegraph 
line.  The  sight  astonished  me,  "paralyzed"  should  be 
the  term  perhaps,  but  language  is  not  quite  so  strong 
here  in  this  matter  of  fact  old  motherland.  I  looked 
up  my  uncle  for  an  explanation.  "This,"  said  he, 
"is  not  a  case  of  running  in  a  heavy  dew,  as  Western 
American  steamers  are  said  to,  it  is  only  a  lagoon,  bayou, 
slough,  or  to  be  correct,  is  the  mouth  of  the  River  Trave, 
which  maintains  a  narrow  channel  out  through  its  delta 
to  the  sea.  That  channel  for  twenty  miles  or  so  me- 
anders through  the  grass,  or  "tules"  as  they  call  them 
in  California.  Those  masts  you  see  are  on  boats,  towed 
by  horses,  and  the  contrivance  is  to  clear  the  towlines 
over  the  tops  of  the  willows  that  are  planted  on  the 
banks  of  the  canal.  It  is  all  very  simple  you  see,  except 
the  making  of  the  delta  and  all  other  things  of  the  kind 
that  require  some  thousands,  five  to  a  hundred  thousand 


72  NOTES    BY    A    STUDENT. 

years  perhaps,  to  form.  This  thing  of  time,  Tech,  is  a 
queer  quantity,  you  don't  know  anything  about  time, 
that  is,  you  have  no  conception  not  founded  on  years, 
a  lifetime,  or  the  period  of  history,  in  fact  no  one  has, 
except  a  few  scientific-  men  who  are  for  years  buried 
in  a  fog  of  archaeology,  but  this  has  nothing  to  do  with 
the  river.  We  are  heading  sou '-west.  In  a  few  moments 
we  will  be  over  yonder  heading  north,  then  some  other 
way  and  in  an  hour  or  so  will  come  to  Liibeck.  It  is  one 
of  the  Hanse  towns,  a  member  of  the  Hanseatic  League, 
famous  in  commercial  history,  and  the  subject  of  various 
lies  as  well  as  a  great  number  of  queer  truths.  You  can 
read  it  up  at  your  leisure,  and  believe  as  much  as  you 
please.  Liibeck  is  a  wonderful  old  town  that  always 
had  an  eye  to  business,  down  to  a  century  or  so  ago. 
They  loaned  money  to  the  Swedes,  who  were  eternally 
at  war  with  some  of  their  neighbors,  and  of  course  bank- 
rupt. The  Liibeckers  exacted  usurious  interest  with 
collateral  security.  Once  they  had  a  lien  on  the  church 
bells  in  Sweden,  and  took  them  too,  bells  were  then  of 
more  value  than  at  the  present  time.  We  can  make  a 
good  one  now-a-days  for  ten  cents  a  pound,  but  in  those 
days  two  or  three  hundred  years  ago,  they  put  silver 
in  their  bells,  and  even  if  they  did  not,  the  alloys  were 
worth  nearly  as  much  as  silver. 

"Liibeck,  after  the  Hanseatic  League,  went  down  as  a 
commercial  city.  It  is  an  inconvenient  out-of-the-way 
place  as  a  sea  port;  put  there  so  the  sea  robbers  could 
not  reach  it  without  some  fighting  on  land,  clearing 
away  chains,  dams  and  other  obstructions  for  defense. 

"Twenty  years  ago  there  was  good  grazing  for  cows 
and  goats  in  some  of  the  streets  there,  but  just  now 
there  is  a  new  lease  of  commercial  life.  Liibeck  is  alive 
again. ' ' 


NOTES    BY    A    STUDENT.  73 


In  time  we  came  through  the  grass  and  up  to  the 
city,  which  is  in  fact  a  wonderful  old  place,  very  Ger- 
man, very  comfortable  looking,  and  fearfully  old,  to  me 
at  least.  The  churches  or  cathedrals  here  (I  call  all 
the  large  ones  cathedrals)  are  of  brick  of  great  size, 
filled  with  relics,  paintings  and  what  not. 

I  am  much  afraid  of  having  caught  from  my  uncle 
some  of  his  irreverent  ideas  in  respect  to  old  churches. 
He  says  "he  would  not  give  a  good  clean  white  painted 
wooden  church  in  America  for  the  lot."  "This  old 
trumpery,"  he  says,  "is  a  co-efficient  of  superstition, 
harmless  now,  interesting  and  even  sacred  to  many,  but 
that  is  no  reason  I  must  see  it  in  that  light.  There  is  an 
old  chest,  made  of  oak  wool  bound  all  over  with  iron 
bands,  hob  nails^  rivets  and  so  on.  That  chest  contains 
valuables  belonging  to  the  church,  and  is  itself  a  relic 
of  much  value,  that  is,  value  to  those  who  value  it,  I 
would  not  give  ten  cents  for  the  lot.  The  iron  is  worth 
a  cent  a  pound  as  scrap,  and  the  oak  might  make  firewood 
enough  to  cook  a  dinner.  That  is  my  estimate,  but  I 
have  no  business  to  thrust  my  views  of  the  matter  on 
other  people.  I  think2  however,  it  will  be  safe  to  sug- 
gest to  a  young  man  like  you  to  look  upon  the  whole  relic 
matter  as  a  humbug.  I  have  a  crack  brained  relation 
who  labors  hard  in  a  machine  works  to  earn  money 
which  he  pays  away  for  old  worm  eaten  cabinet  ware. 
He  is  rich  and  derives  pleasure  from  being  thought  a 
"  connoiseur, "  as  the  French  say.  Perhaps  1  am  a 
little  too  utilitarian  in  these  views;  because  there  is  to  a 
mechanic,  some  pleasure  in  looking  at  an  old  machine — 
that  old  engine  of  Watt's,  we  saw  in  London,  for  ex- 
ample, but  then  an  engine  is  a  thing  of  practical  use — a 
co-laborer  with  men  and  not  the  fancy  of  some  old  monk 


74  NOTES    BY    A    STUDENT. 

who  never  earned  enough  money  to  buy  the  salt  in  his 
porridge. 

* '  I  have  another  friend  who  is  a  coin  crank,  and  I 
sometimes  look  with  compassion  on  his  collection  of 
badly  made  old  chips — rough,  hammered  out,  some  of 
them,  and  worth  just  what  the  market  quotations  set 
down  for  the  metal.  He  thinks  they  are  old;  yes,  old 
for  the  Romans  or  even  the  Assyrians  or  Egyptians  to 
make.  For  my  part  a  modern  coining  press  has  more 
interest.  By  the  way,  just  note  down  in  that  book  of 
yours,  the  following  proposition :  Relic  worship  is  com- 
monly affectation,  and  a  substitute  for  other  informa- 
tion, which  the  worshiper  has  not.  He  tries  to  hide  his 
defects  in  a  pretended  knowledge  and  admiration  for 
that  which  is  shut  out  from  popular  view  and  thus  hides 
his  own  deficiencies." 

I  cannot  help  in  some  degree  subscribing  to  these  icon- 
oclastic views  of  my  Uncle,  but  their  chief  significance 
at  this  time  is,  that  our  journey  will  not  extend  to  any  of 
the  old  countries,  nor  do  I  care;  that  delta  of  the  Trave 
has  knocked  the  romance  of  age  out  of  my  head.  When 
I  want  to  see  something  old  hereafter,  a  stone  quarry 
will  do.  It  will  be  of  much  more  importance  to  cultivate 
some  reasonable  conception  of  the  brief  time  mankind 
has  been  a  tenant  of  this  little  planet  of  ours. 

There  is  some  machine  work  done  at  Liibeck,  some 
ships  built,  one  now  and  then.  Fine  Baltic  steamers  go 
there.  There  are  no  fights,  brawls ;  no  crime  of  any  kind 
to  speak  of.  The  laws  are  supreme  and  the  town  is  peace. 
A  little  Chicago — just  a  little — infused  into  Liibeck 
would  improve  it,  and  several  large  cargoes  of  Liibeck. 
sent  over  to  " balance  the  trade,"  would  much  improve 
Chicago. 


NOTES    BY    A    STUDENT.  75 

—From  here  to  Hamburg  it  is  only  a  short 
way,  and  unless  detained  there  too  long  I  hope  to  per- 
suade my  Uncle  to  go  to  Holland  and  Belgium  before 
we  return  to  England,  to  Holland  anyhow,  where  I  can 
realize  some  pleasure  from  again  reading  a  favorite 
book  of  mine,  Motley 's  ' '  Rise  of  the  Dutch  Republic, ' ' — 
a  kind  of  joke  in  this  name,  however,  because  Holland 
is  not  a  republic?  and  certainly  has  not  risen,  at  least 
not  more  than  ten  feet,  and  is  the  lowest  inhabitable 
country  known,  one  that  has  to  be  "pumped  out"  as  my 
Uncle  calls  it.  I  hope  to  fill  up  sundry  pages  there,  if 
we  visit  that  country. 


CHAPTER  XIII. 

A     STUBBORN      PEOPLE FRANCS      AND      FLORINS HOLLAND 

TAKEN  BY   THE   DUTCH A  RATIONAL  BATTLE 

EMIGRANTS  NEED  NOT  APPLY. 


—We  made  our  way  from  Liibeck  to  Rot- 
terdam, which,  in  many  respects,  is  the  principal  '  *  dam ' ' 
in  the  Netherlands.  How  many  there  are  no  one  can 
tell.  The  word  is  synonymous  with  our  word  "dam," 
and  means  a  water  barrage  in  a  river  or  estuary.  Rot- 
terdam is  at  the  mouth  of  the  Rhine,  or  mouths  of  the 
Rhine  as  one  may  say,  because  it  splits  up  like  our 
Mississippi  River.  Rotterdam  is  a  kind  of  commercial 
outpost  of  Germany,  a  place  of  landing  goods  for  the 
Empire,  and  the  wonder  is  that  this  Dutch  country  has 
not  been  somehow  merged  into  the  German  Confedera- 
tion— then  again  perhaps  not,  when  we  come  to  read  of 
the  stiff-necked  nature  of  these  people,  who  have  never 
been  subjugated  after  an  infinite  amount  of  trying  by 


76  NOTES    BY    A    STUDENT. 

great  powers,  notably  by  Spain  in  the  wars  of  Philip  II. 

It  is  curious  to  think  of,  and  to  know,  the  energy  and 
indomitable  spirit  that  has,  in  the  past,  characterized 
these  people  of  Holland  or  the  ''hollow  land,"  meaning 
also  Netherlands,  or  "  Nederlands, "  the  lower  lands. 
The  name  is  relevant,  very  much  so,  because  a  great  deal 
of  it  is  lower  than  the  sea.  In  fact,  a  great  deal  of  it 
was  sea  until  "pumped  out,"  as  my  Uncle  says. 
Haarlem  Meer,  or  the  Sea  of  Harlem,  was  pumped  out 
forty  or  fifty  years  ago.  A  portion  of  the  Zuyder  Zee 
(Cider  Sea)  has  been  recently  pumped  out,  and  in  both 
cases  a  county  or  so  gained.  These  pumping  appliances 
of  Holland  are  wonderful,  both  in  number  and  extent, 
always  of  extreme  simplicity  and  efficiency,  and  this  is 
the  principal  engineering  work  of  our  day  in  Holland. 

In  times  past  this  country  was  a  center  of  the  mechanic 
arts.  Peter  the  Great  came  here  to  learn  ship  building, 
and  some  industries  have  lasted  until  now,  but  none  that 
require  much  power.  Some  of  my  Uncle's  views  here 
will  be  in  place,  and  better  than  my  own,  at  least  more 
comprehensive.  I  have  a  note  as  follows: 

"Holland,"  said  he,  "is  the  queerest  country  in  the 
world,  or  at  least  that  part  of  the  world  we  know. 
Somethings  about  it  are  unpleasant.  It  is  a  trading 
country,  very  rich,  and  the  main  business  is  to  increase 
the  number  of  florins.  If  you  want  to  be  'skinned/  as 
we  say  at  home,  here  is  a  good  chance.  We  are  staying 
at  the  'Bible  Hotel.'  Just  wait  until  the  bill  comes,  no 
bible  in  that,  but  florins  for  this  and  florins  for  that. 
This  insidious  coin  is  worth  forty  cents,  or  a  little  more, 
just  double  the  franc.  Two  hours  from  here,  in  Belgium, 
a  franc  will  buy  just  as  much  as  a  florin  does  here. 
There  are  discounts,  percentages  and  'shaves'  of  one 


NOTES    BY    A    STUDENT.  77 


kind  or  another  for  the  stranger  in  every  transaction. 
They  live  by  percentage,  and  thrive  on  it. 

' '  Then  too,  there  is  the  cleanliness  of  which  we  hear  so 
much.  It  is  true,  but  not  an  inherent  virtue.  It  is  a 
forced  one?  a  struggle  for  existence.  Keep  clean  or  die 
is  the  rule.  How  do  you  suppose  they  sewer  a  city  like 
this,  for  example?  I  will  show  you  before  we  go  away 
how  they  go  "up"  out  of  their  houses  to  dump  garbage 
into  the  sewers.  It  is  scrub  or  die,  as  I  said  before. 

'  *  The  domestic  or  home  economy  of  this  country  is  the 
best  in  the  world,  and  their  external  economy  selfish — 
that  of  a  trading  community.  Their  management  of  Java 
is  of  the  same  kind  we  apply  to  lemons  when  compound- 
ing punch.  They  have  famous  tobacco  and  long  pipes, 
and  the  care  of  these  pipes  is  the  first  duty  of  the  men 
here.  I  have  seen  a  smith's  striker  with  a  long  pipe,  who 
divided  his  attention  between  the  sledge  and  the  pipe, 
with  a  large  difference  in  favor  of  the  latter. 

"The  whole  thing  can  be  summed  up  by  saying  that 
modern  Holland  has  learned  enough  to  draw  the  main 
part  of  their  living  from  their  neighbors.  Those  that 
do  work,  work  faithfully,  and  have  to.  It  is  like  the 
cleanliness.  When  fighting  the  sea  and  abominable 
weather  there  is  no  chance  of  shirking.  They  build  some 
steamers  here  for  pure  contrariness.  They  also  had  the 
audacity  to  make  compound  engines,  good  ones,  too, 
forty  years  before  the  British  began  it.  They  are  the 
stubbornest  people  in  the  world,  and  don't  want  anyone 
to  agree  with  them.  Washington  Irving 's  'Knicker- 
bocker History'  is  no  fancy  picture  of  the  Dutch  at  New 
York.  If  not  true  it  ought  to  be,  and  I  am  afraid  is  the 
best  picture  of  Dutch  natural  traits  we  have.  They 
were  never  conquered.  Romans,  Northmen,  Spaniards, 


78  NOTES    BY    A    STUDENT. 

and  the  rest  who  have  tried  it,  soon  looked  up  easier 
work;  now  there  is  little  chance  of  it. 

1 1  No  nation  except  the  Dutch  could  keep  the  water  out 
of  here.  It  has  taken  a  thousand  years  to  learn  how, 
and  never  could  have  been  done  by  any  other  people  less 
stubborn.  There  is  no  timber,  no  iron,  coal  or  other  ele- 
ments of  manufacture  here,  unless  we  count  wind  and 
water.  The  former  answers  in  a  way  for  power,  and 
water  is  of  little  use  on  a  dead  level,  but  there  is  cheese 
and  gin  manufactured,  and  that  reminds  me  of  a  toddy 
which  must  straightway  be  compounded." 

Out  of  this  medley  one  may  select  a  good  many  points 
"anent"  Holland,  as  the  Scotch  say.  There  are  many 
more,  and  I  am  fully  prepared  to  believe  the  story  of 
the  Dutch  judge,  who  decided  a  case  between  two  mer- 
chants by  " weighing"  their  account  books,  and  finding 
them  " equal,"  ruled  that  the  books  "balanced,"  and 
that  the  sheriff  must  pay  the  costs  of  the  suit  for  bother- 
ing the  court  with  such  a  case.  It  was  the  last  case 
brought  before  that  judge,  no  one  even  ventured  into 
that  court  again.  The  court  had  peace,  so  did  the  people, 
and  Solomon  was  excelled.  I  also  think  of  the  Dutch 
general  who  marched  his  forces  against  the  Swedes  who 
settled  on  the  Delaware  in  our  early  times,  and  who,  on 
arriving  in  front  of  the  Swedish  fort,  found  that  his 
army  was  "out  of  beer."  A  truce  was  called  while  this 
beer  matter  was  settled.  The  Dutch  went  into  the  fort 
to  get  beer  with  the  Swedes,  and  after  a  time,  when  the 
canteens  were  replenished,  and  the  two  commanders  were 
ready  for  battle,  they  found  it  impossible  to  separate 
the  armies.  They  had  become  hopelessly  mingled  and 
confused  by  exchanging  hats  and  otherwise,  so  that  when 
the  two  sides  were  drawn  up  neither  dared  to  fire  for 


NOTES    BY    A    STUDENT.  79 


fear  of  killing  friends  on  the  other  side.  The  dispute 
was  then  settled  amicably  by  the  generals,  with  no  other 
aid  than  common  sense  and  their  pipes.  It  was  the  most 
logical  campaign  to  be  found  in  the  history  of  the  whole 
world,  the  only  one  that  comports  with  common  sense. 

There  are  no  spread-eagle  fireworks  and  jingoism  in 
Holland.  That  went  out  with  old  Van  Tromp's  broom, 
which  he  hoisted  at  his  masthead  and  sailed  up  and  down 
the  English  Channel  with,  after  "sweeping"  out  all 
op  posing  craft  about  there.  The  Dutch  are  educated 
beyond  war,  unless  it  would  be  to  keep  savages  out  of 
their  country.  There  is  no  spirit  of  smashing  someone 
for  "glory,"  and  in  that  lies  a  civilization  beyond  any 
other  country  at  this  day. 

There  is  no  need  of  immigration  laws  here.  "The 
Dutch  have  taken  Holland"  is  an  old  saying,  which 
admits  of  the  qualification  that  no  one  else  wants  Hol- 
land, and  no  one  else  wants  to  go  there.  I  imagine  that 
no  land  is  so  free  from  "foreigners."  Nature  always 
provides  some  kind  of  compensating  clause  in  her  econ- 
omy. A  salubrious  country,  without  great  heat  or  cold, 
is  overrun  with  strangers  seeking  climate,  emigrants 
flock  there,  and  are  usually  not  a  desirable  class.  They 
are  the  high  and  low.  The  industrial  middle  class,  who 
own  and  manage  business,  do  not  emigrate ;  they  have 
business  at  home.  It  is  the  speculative,  the  vicious,  and 
undesirable  generally,  that  form  a  great  part  of  emigrat- 
ing people.  They  do  not  go  to  Holland,  and  never  will. 
They  cannot  cope  with  the  Dutch  in  any  way,  would  be 
beaten  at  every  turn,  and  starve,  if  they  did  not  freeze 
or  drown. 

— One  of  the  wonders  of  this  country  is 
"willow  mattresses,"  not  to  sleep  on,  but  to  hold  mud, 


80  NOTES    BY    A    STUDENT. 

and  build  up  permanent  works,  which  there  is  no  other 
material  for.  The  plodding  Dutchmen,  while  smoking, 
are  always  thinking  and  observing.  They  discovered 
centuries  ago  that  Nature,  in  her  grand  schemes,  had 
not  neglected  their  country.,  but  employed  osier  twigs 
and  roots  in  embankments  to  retain  water.  When  the 
Rhine  is  to  be  dammed  or  dyked,  willow  mattresses  are 
sunk  and  mud  piled  on  top,  then  harder  material.  The 
great  dykes  are  made  in  the  same  manner,  so  are  the 
common  roads  where  they  cross  wet  or  reclaimed  land. 
A  row  of  mattresses  is  laid  along,  mud  on  top,  then  dry 
earth  if  any,  and  on  top  of  all  a  good  hard  covering  of 
shells,  stone,  asphalt,  or  something  to  withstand  wear; 
when  done  there  is  both  a  road  and  a  dyke ;  not  only  these 
but  a  continuous  wharf.  The  ditches  at  the  side,  where 
the  mud  is  scooped  out,  become  a  canal,  used  for  all  the 
common  purposes  that  our  wagons  are ;  so  we  have  a  fine 
road,  a  water  dyke,  and  a  wharf  all  made  at  once,  and 
not  like  our  public  works,  with  an  eye  to  the  next  con- 
tractor, but  there  to  stay  for  generations  to  come. 

Schools  are  perfect — education  everywhere,  charitable 
institutions  the  wonder  of  the  world;  peace,  quietness 
and  stubbornness.  If  I  were  a  Dutchman  I  would  live 
here,  if  not  a  Dutchman  would  not  think  of  such  a  thing. 
"The  Dutch  have  taken  Holland."  As  Rip  Van  Winkle 
says, '  *  May  they  live  long  and  prosper. ' ' 

—From  here  we  go  by  Flushing  to 
England  again,  where  sundry  pages  of  my  note  book, 
filled  up  long  ago,  will  find  some  place  in  these  notes. 


NOTES    BY    A    STUDENT.  81 


CHAPTER  XIV. 

LITTLE    BELGE THE    GIANT    ANTIGONUS BRITISH    FORTIFI- 
CATIONS— MONS  MEG DOG  TRACTION — A  CITY 

SET  ON  A  HILL. 


— On  the  margin  of  my  notes  I  find  at  this 
point  a  memorandum  saying  that  my  Uncle,  who  was 
called  back  to  England  for  two  or  three  days,  left  me  to 
look  at  Belgium  alone?  which  if  not  well  done  would  have 
to  be  taken  up  and  all  gone  over  again  on  his  return. 
This  was  a  strain,  of  course.  Here  is  the  result. 

— Belgium,  because  of  its  small  limits,  and 
being  wedged  in  between  greater  countries,  is  but  little 
known  in  proportion  to  its  real  claims  as  a  State.  Three 
cities,  Brussels,  Antwerp,  and  Ghent,  together  contain 
over  a  half  million  of  population,  one  half  being  in 
Brussels.  Two  million  chaldrons  of  coal  and  160,000 
tons  of  iron  are  annually  produced.  Cloth  weaving  at 
Verviers  occupies  the  labor  of  4,000  men.  One  machine- 
making  and  iron-working  establishment  near  Liege,  the 
society  Cockerill,  employs  over  15,000  men,  and  is  the 
third  largest  in  the  world.  The  country  is  checkered 
over  with  railways,  the  system  answering  as  a  model  for 
many  countries  who  have  tried  to  imitate  it.  All  these 
things  and  many  more  are  written  down  in  official  books, 
however,,  and  we  now  pass  to  other  matters. 

Antwerp,  where  the  giant  Antigonus  stood  watch  over 
the  Scheldt  and  exacted  toll  from  passing  vessels,  owes 
its  name  to  a  peculiarity  of  this  mythical  personage,  who 
cut  off  the  hands  of  those  who  would  not  pay,  and  threw 
the  hands  out  over  the  walls  of  his  den,  saying  "where 
they  light  let  there  be  a  city."  "Werpen"  in  low 


82  NOTES    BY    A    STUDENT. 

Dutch,  or  "Werfen"  in  German,  is  to  throw,  and 
* i  Antwerp  "  is  "  hand  throw, ' '  but  how  the  French  make 
"Anvers"  out  of  it  is  not  so  clear.  Not  only  in  France, 
but  in  Belgium,  this  last  is  the  name.  Ghent  becomes 
"Gand"  in  Belgium  or  France,  and  the  traveller  be- 
comes confused  over  these,  like  the  writer,  when  he  was 
in  "Achen,"  inquired  respecting  Aixlachapelle ;  worse 
things  have  been  done,  however. 

"How  would  you  get  along  without  speaking  German, 
when  in  Belgium  ? ' '  inquired  a  friend  in  America,  where 
a  considerable  company  were  assembled.  I  waited  some 
time  before  answering  to  see  if  anyone  would  correct 
him,  and  am  yet  convinced  that  everyone  present 
thought  Belgium  was  a  German  State.  There  is,  how- 
ever, nothing  German  about  Belgium;  it  was  sliced  off 
from  Holland  in  1830,  because  of  incompatibility  of 
temper  and  other  purposes,  a  divorce  of  international 
policy,  and  as  a  country  is  French.  French  is  the 
language  of  the  educated,  and  in  Brussels  is  spoken 
almost  excusively,  except  among  servants,  who  are  for 
the  most  part  Flemish.  The  Belgians  are  Celtic  and 
Teutonic  in  origin,  and  may  at  this  day,  be  called 
French,  Flemish  and  Walloon.  The  aspect  of  the  coun- 
try, the  manners,  customs  and  nearly  all  which  a  trav- 
eller sees  differs  but  little  from  Normandy  in  France, 
and  only  from  the  whole  north  of  France  in  a  greater 
prosperity.  Coal,  iron  and  England  made  Belgium. 
England  in  acting  as  a  factor,  was  true  to  her  trading 
instincts;  there  was  an  axe  to  grind  somewhere;  disin- 
terested policy  is  not  one  of  British  peculiarities,  and  if 
she  spends  money,  you  may  depend  upon  it,  there  is 
something  to  come  out  of  it  some  way  and  f.'ome  time. 


NOTES    BY    A    STUDENT.  83 

The  traveller  in  approaching  Antwerp  from  the  coun- 
iry  is  astonished  to  see  two  lines  of  fortifications  of 
immense  strength,  one  about  15  miles,  the  other,  perhaps 
5  miles  long,  encircling  the  city.  The  outer  line  being 
a  chain  of  strong  earthworks,  may  not  be  noticed,  but 
the  inner  line  will  be  sure  to  be  seen,  and  is  not  unoften 
thought  to  be  a  city  wall,  which  it  is  indeed.  Bomb 
proof  dens,  magazines,  guns  and  all  the  infernal  ma- 
chinery of  war  is  hid  away  about  these  quiet  looking 
grass-covered  mounds,  ready  to  be  used  at  an  hour's 
notice. 

My  vis-a-vis  at  table-d'hote,  was  a  major  dressed  in 
the  neat  and  somewhat  outre  style  of  Belgian  officers. 
I  was  introduced  by  the  host,  and  as  the  officer  spoke 
but  little  English,  and  I  less  French  we  managed  to 
converse  with  difficulty,  but  this  very  fact,  as  is  always 
the  case,  makes  people  communicative.  They  imagine 
what  is  told  can  not  be  repeated?  because  so  imperfectly 
understood.  One  of  my  first  questions  was  about  the 
forts;  "what  are  they  for?"  said  I,  "are  the  Belgians 
likely  to  attack  one  of  their  own  cities?  If  the  forts 
faced  the  Scheldt,  I  could  see  some  purpose  for  them." 
The  major  hesitated,  but  finally  leaned  across  the  table 
and  whispered  very  loud  "Engleesh. "  I  stopped  to 
think,  and  in  a  few  minutes  and  without  another  ques- 
tion, had  what  was  then  considered,  and  is  now  believed 
to  be  the  meaning  of  this  fortification  of  the  landside  of 
Antwerp,  and  I  venture  to  here  repeat  the  substance  of 
my  conjectures. 

Belgium  is  the  continental  out-post  of  Great  Britain 
and  answers  the  purpose  which  Calais  once  served,  only 
in  a  more  extended  sense.  Antwerp  is  the  continental 
rendezvous  for  stores,  ships,  men  and  war  material  in 


84  NOTES    BY    A    STUDENT. 

case  of  war  with  Germany  or  France.  In  twenty-four 
hours  an  army  can  be  moved  from  any  part  of  England 
to  Antwerp,  and  would  at  once  be  impregnably  in- 
trenched behind  these  strong  earth- works.  Immense 
warehouses  stand  along  the  water  apparently  idle,  but 
all  these  things  have  a  purpose.  English  gold  has,  no 
doubt,  erected  the  warehouses  and  paid  for  the  forts.  It 
is  all  part  of  one  plan  reaching  back  to  the  time 
Leopold  of  Saxe  Coburg,  Queen  Victoria's  uncle,  was 
placed  on  the  Belgian  throne,  but  there  is  no  fault  in 
this  if  all  is  as  conjectured,  and  it  is  only  one  more  evi- 
dence of  England's  sagacity  and  foresight,  which  has 
brought  nearly  a  quarter  of  the  habitable  globe  under 
her  control  and  given  her  sway  over  325,000,000  people. 
Beige  is  the  gainer.  No  right  is  abridged,  no  restraint 
imposed,  and  she  has  the  whole  military  force  of  Britain 
to  avail  against  aggressive  measures  on  the  part  of  Ger- 
many or  France. 

Going  from  England  to  the  Continent,  Antwerp  is 
one  of  the  first  cities  where  a  stranger  may  see  the  street 
traffic,  watched  over  by  the  Virgin.  At  every  crossing 
of  importance  in  the  older  parts  of  the  city  a  Madonna 
will  be  seen  perched  up  on  one  or  the  other  of  the  four 
corners,  often  on  two  corners.  She  is  commonly  sym- 
metrical and  brilliant  in  blue  and  gold,  but  sometimes 
crude  and  imperfect.  The  carvings  are  generally  about 
life  size,  and  of  wood. 

Tapers  are  lighted  around  these  images  on  fete  days, 
and  in  some  cases  when  the  donor  of  the  Madonna  or 
the  occupant  of  the  house  can  afford  it,  one  or  more 
burners  are  kept  up  each  night,  answering  the  double 
purpose  of  improving  the  street  lighting,  which  is  bad, 
and  calls  the  passers-by  to  a  thought  of  the  ever  pres- 


NOTES    BY    A    STUDENT.  85 

ence  of  c  *  Him  who  watcheth  over  all. ' '  This  old  custom, 
which  measured  by  modern  standards  and  especially 
from  a  protestant  point  of  view,  seems  ridiculous  and 
idolatrous,  is,  in  fact,  no  such  thing. 

One  who  has  risen  at  5  o'clock  on  a  winter  morning 
in  one  of  the  cities  of  North  France,  Rouen,  Amiens 
or  Arras,  and  attended  the  churches  to  see  hundreds 
kneeling  on  the  cold  stone  floors,  offering  up  their  devo- 
tions, and  then  goes  home  to  read  through  the  morning 
papers  and  find  that  twenty-four  hours  had  elapsed 
without  a  single  offense  warranting  an  arrest  by  the 
police,  will  be  convinced  that  there  are  more  ways  than 
one  of  controlling  and  saving  people  from  crime  and 
disorder. 

Antwerp  has  many  things  of  interest  to  be  seen.  The 
pictures  in  the  museum  are  justly  celebrated.  The 
zoological  gardens,  although  not  so  extensive  as  at  Lon- 
don or  Paris,  have  something  about  them  which  renders 
them  more  interesting  than  either  of  the  latter,  the 
selection  is  better  or  the  classification  and  arrangement 
more  complete,  at  any  rate  one  will  go  to  the  zoological 
gardens  at  Antwerp  and  the  next  day  will  want  to  go 
again.  At  Hamburg  there  are  many  more  animals,  but 
one  trip  satisfies. 

Across  the  Scheldt,  a  mile  distance,  where  a  collection 
of  wooden  sheds  stand  on  the  bank,  one  can  see  the 
word  "Gand"  written  up  in  giant  letters;  this  is  the 
terminus  of  the  railway  connecting  Antwerp  with  Ghent- 
Crossing  on  the  ferry,  and  enduring  a  tedious  ride  of 
two  and  a  half  hours  through  the  Pays  de  Waes,  costing 
about  one  dollar,  without  anything  of  interest  to  see, 
will  land  a  traveller  in  Ghent.  Here  there  is  a  popula- 
tion of  over  100,000;  good  hotels,  good  buildings  and 


86  NOTES    BY    A    STUDENT. 

in  some  respects  a  resemblance  to  Brussels.  Houses, 
which  coming  from  England  one  would  take  to  be  the 
residence  of  a  royal  duke,  turn  out  to  be  occupied  as 
baker  shops,  barber  shops?  groceries  and  the  like. 

What  is  the  reason  that  in  England  a  peculiar  plan 
of  buildings  was  invented  which  we  in  America  follow 
out,  and  why  is  it  that  in  France,  Germany,  Sweden, 
or  as  we  may  say,  in  nearly  the  whole  of  Europe,  houses 
are  arranged  about  courts,  and  people  live  on  "flats" 
as  we  call  it?  I  suppose  there  are  good  reasons  for  both 
plans.  The  query  is,  how  is  it  that  the  two  plans  exist? 

Here  in  Ghent,  a  given  area  of  ground  and  a  given 
expenditure  in  building,  will  house  and  accommodate 
twice  the  number  of  people  that  a  like  space  and  invest- 
ment would  in  London  or  old  New  York.  Everyone 
enjoys  the  satisfaction  of  living  in  a  good  house,  which 
can  be  warmed  at  half  the  expense  and  no  stairs  to 
climb.  The  privacy  is  just  the  same  as  in  detached 
houses.  I  have  lived  both  ways  and  prefer  flats  in  a 
continental  house.  The  Scotch  in  both  Edinburg  and 
Glasgow  build  on  the  etage  method,  and  the  system  may 
at  some  future  time,  say  a  hundred  years  from  now, 
reach  London.  It  will  require  about  this  length  of  time 
to  introduce  and  harmonize  a  change  of  the  kind  in 
conservative  England. 

Every  one,  at  least  every  one  in  Eng- 
land or  America  has  heard  of  or  seen  the  celebrated 
"Mons  Meg,"  that  wonderful  old  wrought  iron  gun 
mounted  at  Edinburg  Castle.  A  gun  of  20  inches  bore, 
built  of  staves  and  then  covered  with  rings  of  wrought 
iron,  a  piece  of  work  that  would  puzzle  many  of  our 
modern  gun  makers  to  perform.  This  gun,  supposed  to 
have  been  constructed  in  Mons,  Belgium,  some  centuries 


NOTES    BY    A    STUDENT.  87 

ago,  stands  as  a  proof  how  invention  repeats  itself.  I 
had  sat  beside  "Mons  Meg"  many  a  time  ruminating. 
It  was  my  pet  antiquity;  nothing  seen  abroad  had  the 
same  interest,  judge  then  of  my  surprise,  not  to  say 
disgust,  when  in  turning  a  corner  in  Ghent  I  found 
myself  face  to  face  or:  more  correctly  speaking,  face  to 
muzzle  with  another  "Mons  Meg,"  an  exact  mate  to 
its  Edinburg  sister,  having  so  near  as  I  could  determine 
the  same  dimensions  every  way,  only  the  present  one  is 
not  fractured  as  the  Scotch  one  is.  This  old  relic  which 
tells  no  mean  story  of  the  skill  and  ingenuity  of  the 
Belgians  at  a  period  which  is  remote  in  the  mechanic 
arts,  stands  in  front  of  a  kind  of  market-place  on  a  sub- 
stantial frame.  A  glance  in  its  cavernous  depth  showed 
a  lot  of  children's  playthings  in  the  gloom  at  the  bot- 
tom, a  noble  use  of  it.  "The  wolf  shall  lie  down  with 
the  lamb." 

We  have  sacred  authority  for  assuming  that  "a  city 
set  on  a  hill  cannot  be  hid, ' '  and  certainly  if  this  propo- 
sition is  granted,  Brussels  is  not  likely  to  disappear  from 
view.  Perhaps  no  city  in  the  world  can  with  equal 
propriety,  be  described  as  "set  on  a  hill."  There  are 
many  cities  on  higher  ground,  even  on  mountain  tops, 
but  this  is  not  what  is  meant.  Brussels  includes  the 
hill,  not  only  stands  on,  but  surrounds  a  hill,  and  one 
of  the  steepest  in  the  world  to  have  streets  running  up 
and  down  its  sides.  This  claim  is  made,  with  a  full  re- 
membrance of  English  Sheffield,  and  half  a  dozen  undig- 
nified attempts  to  sit  down  and  slide:  dating  from  my 
first  trip  down  High  Street  in  the  city  last  named.  The 
practicability  of  climbing  the  streets  in  Brussels,  like 
many  other  human  achievements,  is  a  result  of  practice. 
A  horse  taken  to  Brussels  from  some  level  city  could 


88  NOTES    BY    A    STUDENT. 

no  more  climb  one  of  those  streets  leading  up  to  the 
palace  and  park,  than  he  could  ascend  a  fireman's  lad- 
der. It  is  learned  by  experience,  and  well  learned  too. 
for  omnibuses  filled  with  people  are  drawn  up  by  three 
horses.  Brussels  is  one  of  the  most  beautiful  cities  in 
Europe,  and  on  the  same  assumption,  of  the  world. 
This  is  stating  it  strongly,  but  is  no  more  than  giving  an 
opinion  which  exists  elsewhere  than  in  Belgium.  With 
one-fifth  of  the  population  Brussels  rivals  Paris  in  what 
may  be  termed  attractiveness.  The  wealth  of  cities  is  as 
their  extent,  that  is;  the  means  to  beautify  and  improve, 
is  as  the  value  of  the  ground,  and  this  increases  very 
regularly  with  the  extent  of  the  population.  Ground 
has  been  sold  in  London  at  the  rate  of  five  millions  of 
dollars  for  an  acre,  and  in  certain  parts  of  Paris  is  no 
doubt  worth  five  to  ten  times  as  much  as  the  most  valu- 
able sites  in  Brussels.  The  beauty  of  Brussels  is  due  to 
its  romantic  situation,  the  taste  of  a  highly  cultivated 
people,  and  to  the  great  individual  wealth  of  the  citi- 
zens. Engineering  science  developed  by  vast  manufac- 
turing and  mining  interests,  and  the  great  railway 
system,  has  among  the  Belgians  attained  a  foremost 
place,  and  on  this  science,  modified  or  controlled  by  a 
refined  taste,  depends  the  development  of  a  city  so  far  as 
those  features  which  render  it  attractive  and  beautiful. 
The  genius  of  Hausman  aided  by  the  highest  engineer- 
ing skill,  made  modern  Paris.  The  same  causes  are 
transforming  London,  bringing  order  out  of  chaos. 

The  Metropolitan  Underground  Railway  is  one  of 
those  creations  which  owes  its  existence  to  exact  science, 
an  undertaking  which  appalls  one  whose  knowledge  of 
such  things  allows  them  to  conceive  of  what  was  to  be 
combated  and  overcome  in  constructing  such  a  line.  The 


NOTES    BY    A    STUDENT.  89 

railway  system  of  Belgium  was  developed  in  the  same 
manner;  almost  every  line,  station  or  switch,  is  a  part 
of  one  vast  and  perfect  plan  laid  down  at  the  beginning, 
and  from  which  no  important  changes  were  made,  be- 
cause of  the  high  skill  and  scientific  knowledge  brought 
to  bear  in  preparing  the  original  scheme. 

—To  come  down  from  railways  to  carts, 
and  from  science  to  an  obscure  branch  of  social  econ- 
omy, I  wish  to  record  the  fact  that  the  Belgians  know 
how  to  manage  dogs.  These  favored  animals,  which 
are  little  more  than  an  expensive  nuisance  in  most 
countries,  are  in  Brussels  raised  to  the  rank  of  co-labor- 
ers with  mankind,  and  earn  their  own  bread,  and 
judging  from  the  expression  on  their  faces  and  from 
their  conduct  in  general,  I  have  not  the  least  hesitation 
in  asserting  that  a  happier  and  better  contented  set 
of  dogs  do  not  exist.  In  Brussels  street  tradesmen  and 
costermongers  have  dogs  to  assist  them  in  pulling  their 
carts,  and  the  arrangement,  aside  from  economic  con- 
siderations, is  a  very  perfect  one.  The  dogs  do  not  go 
in  front  but  are  directly  under  the  carts,  safe  from 
danger  in  the  crowded  traffic  and  take  up  no  room.  The 
cart  can  be  as  readily  handled  and  will  turn  around  in 
a  space  just  as  short  as  though  the  dog  was  not  there. 
At  the  rear  are  a  pair  of  legs,  which  rest  on  the  ground 
when  the  cart  stops,  after  the  manner  of  a  wheel-bar- 
row; these  legs  are  connected  by  a  cross-stretcher,  to 
which  the  dog  is  hitched  with  leather  traces,  which  are 
long  enough  to  allow  him  to  walk  directly  under  the 
axle.  It  is  astonishing  to  see  how  they  will  manage 
when  a  heavy  pull  is  to  be  performed.  One  may  sum 
up  all  qualities  of  the  equine  tribe,  that  indicate  reason- 
ing power,  and  the  whole  will  not  be  worth  a  compari- 


90  NOTES    BY    A    STUDENT. 

son  with  these  dogs.  I  have  watched  them  for  hours, 
climbed  the  hill  alongside  a  cart  to  watch  the  dog  and 
note  his  evident  reasoning  about  the  operation  in  which 
he  was  engaged.  If  he  notices  anything  wrong,  such 
as  an  obstruction  before  a  wheel,  he  gives  a  bark  to 
warn  his  master.  When  the  cart  stops,  if  tired,  he  in- 
stantly sits  down  or  lies  down  to  rest.  If  you  go  near 
the  cart  when  his  master  is  absent,  the  dog  looks  out  to 
see  what  you  want ;  if  anything  is  touched  a  growl  warns 
you,  or  a  loud  bark  recalls  the  tradesman. 

Bread,  vegetables,  milk,  butcher  meat,  and  so  on  are 
served  by  these  dog  carts  and  their  number  is  legion. 
They  correspond  to  the  London  costermongers  and  small 
tradesmen's  carts  except  that  a  dog  instead  of  a  donkey 
is  the  propelling  power.  Dogs  churn,  pump  water,  and 
assist  in  many  things  besides  pulling  carts,  and  to  a 
person  who  does  not  like  dogs,  it  is  a  relief  to  visit 
Belgium  and  see  that  it  is  not  their  own  fault  if  dogs 
are  worthless,  and  that  if  men  are  foolish  enough  to  give 
a  share  of  their  labor  to  support  dogs,  and  will  not  even 
invite  them  to  assist,  no  fault  can  be  found.  Miss 
McFlimsy's  poodle,  in  actual  outlay  for  provisions 
and  attention  costs  $100  a  year,  one  fourth  of  what 
some  poor  men  earn  at  hard  labor.  Many  a  poor  man 
where  children  are  half -clothed  and  denied  the  comforts 
of  life,  divides  his  earnings  with  several  worthless  curs, 
who  never  earn  a  cent?  and  not  unoften  destroy  much 
besides  their  food.  They  manage  these  things  better  in 
Belgium. 

— Brussels  is  not  all  set  on  a  hill,  as  might 
be  inferred  from  what  has  been  said  in  a  former  place, 
the  newer  and  we  may  say  the  main  part,  is  spread  out 
over  a  plain.  Cities  built  on  hills  have  all  been  much 


NOTES    BY    A    STUDENT.  91 

changed  by  the  modern  railway  system.  Locomotives  do 
not  climb  hills,  and  the  result  is  that  cities  set  on  hills 
must  come  down  to  the  locomotive.  There  are  not  a 
few  cities  that  have  been  much  changed  from  this  cause, 
and  Brussels  is  among  the  number.  Business  naturally 
gathers  about  the  terminal  or  station  of  railways,  and 
the  accretion  of  population  and  buildings  which  follow 
upon  the  construction  of  a  railway  soon  shifts  the  center 
of  a  city  and  gives  rise  to  new  interests,  which  change 
the  complextion  of  everything. 

—Now  that  I  am  coming  towards  the  end 
of  these  European  notes,  so  far  as  they  have  been  shared 
with  my  friends  and  the  public,  and  see  before  me,  and 
with  pleasure,  a  resumption  of  my  studies  and  work  in 
my  own  land,  but,  with  a  very  different  view  of  many 
things. 

I  am  now  convinced  that  our  progress  in  this  world 
depends  greatly,  if  not  entirely,  on  what  others  know, 
do  and  think,  and  there  is  no  longer  a  mystery  to  my 
mind  in  China's  standing  still  for  some  thousands  of 
years,  with  a  wall  of  masonry  on  the  Tartar  side  and  a 
wall  of  bigotry  on  all  sides. 

I  find  engineers,  mechanics,  and  men,  much  the  same 
everywhere,  with  like  faculties,  powers  and  traits  and 
have  discarded  my  little  gauge  of  personal  prejudice 
for  something  I  hope  is  more  rational  and  true. 

My  Uncle,  who  was  always  looked  upon  as  a  kind  of 
fanatic,  I  find  is  after  all  only  a  sensible  man,  who  with 
his  duties  as  an  engineer  has  been  able  to  observe  and 
cultivate  his  mind  without  prejudice,  and  in  connection 
with  people  of  various  lands.  I  also  begin  to  feel  charit- 
able toward  the  professors  when  I  consider  the  broader 
field  on  which  their  opinions  were  founded. 


NOTES    BY    A    STUDENT. 


With  these  views  I  return  to  England,  and  here  in 
London  at  the  Castle  and  Falcon,  the  oldest  city  hotel, 
I  sit  ruminating  over  our  relations,  our  environment, 
and  our  future,  seeing  in  all  a  new  phase,  even  the  high- 
est, for  that  calling  which  chance  has  thrown  in  my 
way,  and  to  which  my  humble  efforts  through  life  must 
be  directed.  My  Uncle,  too,  has  got  into  a  reflective 
mood,  because  this  is  nearly  the  end  of  our  journey,  the 
end  of  it  indeed,  in  so  far  as  a  return  to  English  speak- 
ing people.  The  journey  to  New  York  is  nothing;  a 
six-days'  imprisonment  with  comfortable  quarters  and 
a  big  ship  to  rummage  over. 

I  reminded  my  Uncle  of  a  visit  to  Birmingham,  Shef- 
field and  Manchester,  also  Glasgow,  set  down  in  the 
original  itinerary,  to  which  he  replied.  "There  are  no 
secrets  in  British  engineering,  as  soon  as  anyone  discov- 
ers anything  or  improves  anything,  he  straightway  pre- 
pares a  paper  on  the  subject,  and  reads  it  before  a 
learned  society  or  sends  it  for  publication  There  are 
bigots  here  as  there  are  everywhere,  but  not  many  in 
our  line  of  business2  and  I  see  no  reason  for  trailing  over 
works  in  the  cities  you  mention;  however,  we  will  go 
down  by  Birmingham  and  Manchester  if  you  choose, 
and  if  T>ou  are  very  anxious,  go  over  to  some  of  the 
Scotch  yards  and  see  ships  in  construction,  but  it  is  of 
no  iTse.  Each  ship  has  a  blue  book  of  specifications  that 
vni  can  buy,  which  contains  more  than  you  could  see 
i  '  id  inquire  about  in  a  month.  Everyone  is  curious  re- 
specting ship-building  in  England,  and  it  is  no  wonder, 
the  art  has  grown  up  here  in  a  wonderful  way,  and  will 
likely  remain  herCj  because  there  is  no  chance  to  catch 
up  in  other  countries.  The  British  do  not  propose  to 
stop  and  wait  for  that  purpose.  By  the  time  the  French, 


NOTES    BY    A    STUDENT.  93 

Germans,  or  Americans  have  ships  laid  down  to  match 
those  built  here  there  is  a  new  model  to  work  to,  an 
advance  in  dimensions  or  otherwise,  that  sets  up  a  new 
standard. 

''There  is  a  deal  of  twaddle  written  and  spoken  about 
ship-building  here  and  the  causes  that  have  promoted 
it.  It  is  evolution,  skill,  and  being  let  alone;  some  say 
cheap  iron  in  England,  but  it  does  not  matter  where 
the  iron  comes  from.  As  a  matter  of  fact  most  of  it  is 
imported  now3  in  the  ore  I  mean.  Look  at  the  Clyde, 
where  the  winter  days  are  about  eight  hours  long,  rain- 
ing a  good  share  of  the  time  and  some  days  so  dark  that 
the  ship  yards  have  to  be  lighted  with  torches  all  the 
time,  it  is  about  the  worst  place  for  ship-building  in  the 
world,  but  they  learned  how  to  build  ships  by  owning 
and  working  them,  and  do  not  mind  a  Scotch  mist. ' ' 

—We  went  down  to  Birmingham.  What 
queer  places  the  English  select  for  cities !  It  is  a  matter 
of  accident.  Birmingham  is  an  accident.  Set  on  hills, 
valleys,  and  all  kinds  of  sidling  ground.  Its  name  too 
is  an  accident^  Brumagen,  it  is  called  sometimes,  but  the 
name  originally,  was  Borough  Meecham,  the  Borough 
of  Meecham. 

The  things  made  here  would  require  a  book  to  enumer- 
ate, mostly  of  metal,  such  as  pens,  buttons,  guns,  jewelry, 
hardware  and  the  like.  There  is  not  much  science  in  the 
manufactures  here  but  a  great  deal  of  ingenuity,  skill 
empirically  acquired.  For  example,  there  is  a  way  of 
°Hminating  imperfect  spots  on  gunbarrels  by  welding 
ii;  the  flaws  or  spots.  This  is  done  only  by  the  "barrel 
veNJers. "  No  one  else  knows  how  or  cares  to  learn.  A 
double  barrel  gun  is  made  in  a  score  of  places  by  differ- 
ent people,  each  performing  their  particular  part.  It 


94  NOTES    BY    A    STUDENT. 


is  the  old  system,  as  we  would  say,  the  opposite  of  the 
factory  system,  with  advantages  and  disadvantages,  in 
both  a  social  and  a  mechanical  sense.  It  leads  to  indi- 
viduality, and  that  leads  to  a  good  many  things  desir- 
able, but  it  costs  more. 

Of  one  thing  there  is  no  doubt.  No  people  work 
harder  than  Englishmen.  They  work  "with  a  will," 
and  produce  also.  If  not?  how  do  they  compete  with 
their  German,  French,  and  Belgian  brethren  that  are 
almost  within  sight  across  the  channel,  and  no  tax  to 
keep  their  products  out,  the  continental  workmen  re- 
ceiving about  half  as  much  wages? 

By  the  way,  I  have  been  watching  this  wages  matter 
all  along  and  find  it  is  not  the  wages  that  governs  work, 
but  the  work  governs  the  wages,  that  is  men  are  paid  in 
proportion  to  what  they  do  or  produce,  but  that  is  no 
discovery,  because  how  could  it  be  otherwise?  All  sell 
in  the  same  markets,  and  if  the  Belgians  can  hire  a  man 
for  75  cents  a  day,  how  can  the  English  compete  and 
pay  $1.50  a  day?  This  wages  problem  as  commonly 
presented  is  bosh,  it  was  better  understood  a  hundred 
years  ago  than  it  is  today. 

—We  went  out  to  Soho  where  James  Watt 
lived,  or  worked  rather,  because  he  lived  and  is  buried 
at  Handworth,  about  two  miles  away.  James  Watt  & 
Co.  now  have  a  queer  old  shop  at  Soho,  old  in  parts  but 
not  all  over.  In  one  section  there  are  square  cast-iron 
line  shafts  with  long  wooden  drums  nearly  the  whole 
length.  In  other  parts  all  is  modern.  One  old  "grass- 
hopper" engine  was  "put  down  by  Jamie  himself"  as 
the  man  in  charge  told  us.  He  said  his  father  who  had 
managed  the  engine  had  put  new  brasses  in  her,  but  he 
did  not  know  when,  before  he  was  born  forty  years  ago. 


NOTES    BY    A    STUDENT.  95 

The  sewage  pumping  engines  at  Pimlico,  in  London, 
were  made  at  the  works  of  James  Watt  &  Co. — about 
as  advanced  practice  as  can  be  found  at  this  day. 

The  British  copper  pennies  are  coined  here  by  con- 
tract, Mathew  Bolton,  James  Watt's  partner,  undertook 
this  coining  of  pennies  about  100  years  ago,  and  it  has 
gone  on  since.  Just  alongside  of  James  Watt  &  Co., 
are  the  famous  works  of  Tangye  Bros.2  which  we  vis- 
ited, and  is  here  set  down?  all  things  considered,  as  the 
most  advanced  works  of  the  kind  in  the  world.  My 
Uncle,  who  knew  the  works  well,  said:  "They  'manu- 
facture' engines  here,  others  'make'  them.  Tangye 
Bros,  have  built  these  works  and  made  their  money 
mainly  by  making  American  things  and  inventions, 
which  were  always  paid  for  and  acquired  in  a  business 
manner.  These  methods  you  see  here,  which  we  call  a 
division  of  labor,  or  the  duplicating  system,  is  an  Ameri- 
can idea  in  such  manufactures,  but  there  is  no  chance 
to  apply  it  on  such  a  scale  as  this  at  home.  We  have 
no  such  market,  and  it  seems,  do  not  want  any.  These 
men  have  five  hundred  million  of  customers,  when  one 
country  stops  buying  another  begins.  There  are  nearly 
one  thousand  engines  finished  and  in  process  here, 
counting  steam  pumps.  There  is  nothing  strange  in  a 
shelf  thirty  feet  long,  covered  with  cross  heads  piled  up 
four  high,  or  a  pile  of  connecting  rods  that  reminds  one 
of  a  cane  shed  in  Louisiana.  It  is  only  in  proportion 
to  the  market  and  a  result  of  natural  prices  for  material, 
grit,  and  confidence.  These  men  are  Quakers,  from 
Cornwall,  brought  up  to  believe  that  they  are  the  equals 
of  any  people,  and  have  proved  it.  Put  a  tax  of  twenty- 
five  per  cent,  on  their  iron  and  they  would  fail  in  a  year. 
Their  net  profits  don't  begin  to  amount  to  half  that 
much. ' ' 


96  NOTES    BY    A    STUDENT. 


—The  social  arrangements  of  the  men. 
about  3,000  strong,*  are  a  revelation  to  me.  They  are 
like  a  government,  have  all  kinds  of  internal  provisions 
like  a  country  Medical  attendance,  books,  insurance 
funds,  and  the  like,  are  all  provided  for.  The  general 
manager,  Mr.  George  Tangye  is  a  kind  of  leader  for 
them;  lectures,  advises,  and  meets  with  them  not  as  a 
master,  out  of  business  hours,  but  as  a  citizen.  The 
master  part  begins  and  ends  with  the  bell.  I  am  acquir- 
ing some  rational  insight  of  the  British  engineering 
trades  and  the  elements  of  one  kind  or  another  that 
make  up  that  vast  interest. 

—Manchester  is  a  repetition,  except  that 
a  finer  grade  of  work  is  done,  or  rather  the  product  is  of 
articles  demanding  more  precision.  To  comment  upon 
industries  here  in  an  understandable  way  would  add 
page  after  page  to  these  notes  which  are  now  finished 
in  so  far  as  Europe  is  concerned. 


CHAPTER    XV. 

ON       A       DOMESTIC      TOUR KNICKERBOCKER       DUTCH THE 

MEMBER  FROM   CHATAHOOGA AMERICAN  RAILWAY 

CARRIAGES THE    GENESSE. 


— The  transition,  or  translation  it  may  be 
called,  from  the  college  to  the  shop,  is  the  goal  to  which 
every  student's  aims  and  aspirations  tend.  The  monot- 
ony of  study,  embracing  extraneous  things,  and  the  play 
of  the  laboratory,  are  like  the  training  at  a  barracks 
before  an  army  goes  to  the  front.  Everything  one  learns 
or  does  has  reference  to  this  change,  and  the  sulphurous 


*The  Tangyes  now  employ  about  6,000  men  (1899). 


NOTES    BY    A    STUDENT.  97 

smells,  grime?  and  noise  of  the  shop  become  pleasant 
odors,  ecstacy  and  music,  for  a  time  at  least. 

I  have  had  a  little  of  both — good  deal  of  the  latter — 
and  like  both;  the  college  because  it  is  done  with,  and 
the  shop  because  its  labors  and  self-denial  are  congenial ; 
but  there  is  a  surfeit  of  all  things,  and  a  new  trip  with 
my  Uncle  is  an  agreeable  respite,  well  earned  too,  by 
hard  work,  and  some  nips  and  contusions  of  manual  and 
pedal  members^  so  that  a  letter  from  New  York,  "giving 
instructions,"  was  welcome  and  more. 

My  Uncle,  in  his  usual  didactic  style,  says: 

"I  want  to  start  on  a  tour  of  observation  next  week 
and  need  you — don 't  know  which  way,  and  it  don 't  mat- 
ter; will  keep  to  the  water  as  a  medium  of  transporta- 
tion as  much  as  possible.  One  is  always  cramped  and 
disappointed  by  set  plans  for  a  journey.  These  belong 
to  construction.  Bring  a  two-foot  rule;  a  short  glass 
(ocular)  ;  some  stout,  rough  clothes,  and  if  not  an  inflic- 
tion, leave  that  everlasting  note-book  at  home." 

The  above  constitutes  the  "introduction"  down  to 
our  start  on  the  Albany  boat,  a  cool  seat  to  windward, 
and  a  short  lecture  on  the  Dutch,  growing  out  of  the 
name  "Hoboken"  seen  on  the  western  side  at  starting. 

"The  Dutch,"  said  my  Uncle,  "were  at  first  exasper- 
ated, then  amused,  and  finally  pleased  by  the  raillery 
of  Washington  Irving  in  his  'Knickerbocker'  History 
of  New  York.  Stolidity  and  smoke,  both  of  them  are 
good  in  their  place,  and  the  former,  if  we  call  it  con- 
servatism, is  not  a  quality  confined  to  the  Dutch.  Here 
abeam  of  where  we  sit  is  a  steam  engine  driving  this 
boat,  becoming  as  antiquated  as  a  Dutchman's  breeches, 
sharp  gables,  and  galliots  were  a  century  ago.  I  am 
not  complaining  of  a  plain  beam  engine,  on  its  merits, 


98  NOTES    BY    A    STUDENT. 


so  much  as  of  its  incongruity  in  modern  practice.  No 
Dutchman  ever  stuck  to  his  long  pipe  with  more  tenacity 
than  the  Americans  have  to  these  low-pressure  single- 
cylinder  steamboat  engines.  The  fact  of  their  being 
knocked  out  at  sea?  in  one  round,  fifty  years  ago,  did  not 
have  any  effect,  and  while  we  may  admire  the  ingenuity 
and  skill  that  has  maintained  the  beam  engine  on  Ameri- 
can boats  down  to  the  present  time,  we  must  not  forget 
that  the  same  skill  and  energy,  if  it  had  been  applied 
in  other  lines^  as  it  now  must  be,  might  have  set  us  ahead 
instead  of  behind  the  rest  of  the  world. 

"High  pressure,  wide  expansion,  and  machinery 
under  decks  is  the  rule,  or  will  be.  On  the  St.  Lawrence, 
from  Montreal  to  Quebec^  they  have  beam-engine  boats, 
but  the  structure  is  of  iron,  under  the  roof,  and  other- 
wise a  gainly  improvement  on  the  type  we  have  here." 

This  was  a  kind  of  revolutionary  change  of  opinion 
for  my  Uncle,  but  he  was  right.  Beam  engines  had 
many  virtues,  but  their  time  is  past. 

—The  Hudson  is  a  grand  river,  wanting 
only  in  "lineal  dimensions,"  as  my  Uncle  calls  it.  "If 
this  country,"  said  he,  "had  any  concerted  and  practical 
ideas  except  how  to  get  office — had  any  patriotism  not 
confounded  with  the  Treasury  Department,  the  Hudson 
would  long  ago  have  reached  from  Albany  to  Buffalo, 
or  to  Lake  Ontario,  or  both.  Steamboats  should  go  from 
Duluth  to  New  York,  and  will  sometime,  when  we  have 
ten  thousand  less  legislators,  and  the  member  from  Chat- 
ahooga  is  not  obliged  to  use  his  energies  in  securing  an 
appropriation  for  the  improvement  of  Catahoola  Creek, 
so  a  scow  can  get  up  to  his  town  and  bring  out  the  potato 
crop.  What  is  a  trans-country  waterway  to  him,  whose 
interests  lie  at  Chatahooga?  What  has  he  to  do  with 


NOTES    BY    A    STUDENT.  99 

Lakes  Superior,  Michigan,  and  Erie?  He  don't  live 
there;  besides,  who  can  blame  the  member?  He  has 
not  a  neighbor  or  supporter  who  is  not  acting  on  the 
same  principle,  and  cares  as  little  for  National  matters, 
or  any  matter  not  in  his  environment. 

"There  are  a  thousand  objections  to  a  centralized 
government,  and  nine  hundred  and  ninety-nine  in  favor 
of  it.  These  quantities  being  varied  from  one  side  to 
the  other  by  the  character  of  the  people,  or  rather  the 
prevalent .  sentiment  in  a  community.  Put  it  into  an 
equation,  and  add  to  the  popular  government  side,  vir- 
tue and  honesty ;  the  other  member  becomes  minus,  and 
is  destroyed.  Put  there  instead  general  selfishness  and 
ignorance,  and  the  popular  government  side  is  zero. 

"We  are  getting  into  a  position  where  National  under- 
takings, or  National  anything,  is  impossible,  except  as 
political  bargaining.  There  is  very  little  National  prop- 
erty of  any  kind,  except  for  military  purposes,  but  there 
is  private  property  with  National  attributes.  You  see 
that  train  there  on  the  shore;  that  is  private  property, 
also  the  way  and  the  land  beneath  it.  So  its  owners  will 
tell  you,  at  least.  Yet  the  company,  or  those  who  own 
the  road,  have  or  may  exercise  what  our  legal  friends 
call  'eminent  domain/  that  is,  condemn  and  take  private 
property,  at  an  appraisement,  for  their  own  use.  There 
is  not  a  court  in  the  land  that  will  not  at  once  say  that 
eminent  domain  can  be  exercised  for  public  purposes 
only.  How  then  is  a  railway  private  property?  I  am 
speaking  of  National  matters  and  the  chances  of  a  canal 
from  the  Lakes  to  tide  water.  That  the  Government 
can  make  such  a  canal  or  one  across  the  Isthmus  of 
Darien,  who  doubts?  Make  them  honestly  and  cheap, 


100  NOTES    BY    A    STUDENT. 

but  where  will  the  member  from  Chatahooga,  and  his 
friends  'come  in'?     That  is  the  problem." 

Waterways  or  canals  are  an  old  theme  with  my  Uncle. 
One  who  has  spent  his  life  mainly  on  this  element  looks 
upon  railways  as  upstart  affairs,  good  enough  for  dry 
land  and  internal  or  home  traffic,  but  only  supplemen- 
tary in  the  commerce  of  the  world 

—If  old  Hendrick  Hudson  came  up  here 
in  the  summer  it  must  have  delighted  his  senses  to  have 
looked  out  upon  a  scene  like  the  one  now  before  us.  It 
was  just  the  same  two  hundred  years  ago.  The  little 
trimming  and  cutting  done  by  human  hands  has  not 
much  changed  things,  and  never  will.  What  has  taken 
the  mighty  forces  of  nature  millions  of  years  to  work  out 
cannot  be  much  affected  by  man's  puny  powers  in  a 
century  or  two.  Just  over  there  a  great  charge  of  dyna- 
mite knocked  off  at  one  time  a  hundred  thousand  tons 
from  the  rocks,  and  the  result  is  scarcely  visible — a  mere 
speck. 

The  Hudson  is  done;  no  great  changes  will  come  in 
future,  at  least  in  the  estuary  portion,  and  that  means 
nearly  all,  because  when  it  becomes  a  veritable  river, 
at  Albany  and  Troy,  it  is  not  much  of  a  stream,  a  coun- 
try river,  so  to  speak,  and  only  a  drainway  with  rapids, 
pools,  and  even  cataracts;  its  principal  function  being 
to  drive  saw  and  paper  mills  and  the  like. 

At  Albany  we  took  the  train  across  the  country,  and 
across  the  best  portion  of  it  I  have  seen,  to  Buffalo.  My 
Uncle,  in  searching  for  a  place  to  stow  his  effects,  be- 
came "cloudy/'  and  I  could  see  in  his  manner  portent 
of  a  dissertation  on  railway  methods.  I  knew  he  was  no 
admirer  of  the  very  exceptional  system  in  this  country, 


NOTES    BY    A    STUDENT.  101 

and  after  we  had  crowded  into  a  seat  with  about  fifteen 
inches  of  room  for  each,  he  began : 

"Here,"  said  he2  "is  a  great  box  with  cubic  space 
enough  in  it  to  accommodate  everyone,  and  not  a  place 
to  stow  your  hat,  even.  People  seated  jam  together, 
packed  like  sardines,  half  of  them  strangers  in  pairs; 
somebody  just  behind  you  looking  down  your  shirt  col- 
lar, and  exhaling  their  breath  around  your  head  for 
second  use  in  your  own  lungs,  and  then  to  be  passed  on 
to  the  next  person.  Twenty  per  cent,  of  the  length  of 
this  train  is  made  up  with  platforms  and  stairs  to  get 
up  to  the  platform  from  the  ground,  and  then  one  nar- 
row door  for  both  entrance  and  exit.  These  platforms 
belong  in  the  stations,  not  on  the  cars.  What's  the  use 
of  carrying  tons  of  them  with  the  train  when  they  had 
just  as  well  be  in  the  stations?  It  is  all  an  adaptation, 
and  awkward;  saves  the  company  from  the  expense  of 
providing  platforms  at  the  stations.  It  is  the  idea  of 
the  old  road  wagon  continued,  and  this  is  why  the  doors 
are  in  the  ends  of  the  cars. 

"When  traffic  is  dense;  as  it  was  at  Chicago  during 
the  exposition  there?  they  were  compelled  to  abandon 
this  system  and  fit  up  their  trains  and  stations  as  is 
done  in  other  countries.  Just  wait  until  we  reach  a 
station  and  then  watch  the  result  of  this  platform 
method." 

I  did  so,  and  at  Rochester  saw  all  and  more  than  my 
Uncle  had  claimed.  A  hundred  or  more  persons  wanted 
to  get  out,  and  another  hundred  or  more  wanted  to  get 
in.  The  forces  met  and  chaos  reigned.  It  required  two 
and  a  half  minutes  to  get  from  our  seat  to  the  platform, 
or  floor  of  the  station.  The  whole  train  could  have  been 


102  NOTES    BY    A    STUDENT. 

emptied  and  refilled  at  Chicago  or  on  any   European 
railway  in  thirty  seconds. 

I  am  not  quite  patriotic  enough  to  consider  this  a  sen- 
sible system  because  it  exists  here.  Time  will  change  it, 
also  will  produce  compartment  cars,  or  those  without  a 
gangway  down  the  center  to  accommodate  peanut  ven- 
ders; also  will  eliminate  the  commercial  agent  we  call  a 
"conductor/'  who  comes  around  underway  and  causes 
you  to  hunt  up  and  present  a  ticket  as  often  as  he 
chooses,  generally  every  time  the  train  stops  at  a  princi- 
pal station.  If  some  one  gets  on  he  must  be  hunted  up 
among  the  other  passengers  to  collect  the  fare.  Once  it 
seemed  right?  now  it  seems  crude  and  awkward. 

—Here  at  Rochester,  the  Genessee  River 
tumbles  over  a  cliff  2  and  as  my  Uncle  says,  "becomes 
romantic."  ThisJ  he  informs  me  caused  the  selection 
of  this  place  for  a  city,  because  of  the  water  power  avail- 
able now  employed  for  various  manufacturing  uses,  es- 
pecially grinding  grain. 


CHAPTER    XVI. 

DEACON    BARTON A    CORPORATION    WITH    A    SOUL A    QUES- 
TIONABLE  MILL   SITE JUNIUS   JUDSON A   RACE   PROB- 
LEM  ELECTRIC    TOWING SCHEMES    AND    CRIMES. 


— On  leaving  Rochester,  my  uncle  told  a 
story,  a  very  unusual  proceeding  for  him,  especially 
when  the  nature  of  the  story  is  considered.  I  noted  it 
down,  briefly,  as  follows: 

"Old  Deacon  Barton,  a  man  who  could  hardly  live  to 
do  business  in  these  times,  began  here  at  an  early  day, 
fifty  years  ago  at  least,  to  make  edge  tools  for  carpenters, 


NOTES    BY    A    STUDENT.  103 

coopers,  and  others.  He  was  an  ingenious,  industrious, 
honest  man,  whose  name  you  would  find  revered  in 
memory  like  one  of  the  old  saints,  if  you  were  to  inquire 
in  Rochester  now.  He  prospered,  and  after  many  years 
of  toil  and  self-denial,  had  built  up  two  factories;  the 
upper  one  about  the  falls  somewhere,  and  the  other 
some  distance  down  on  the  western  side  of  the  river. 

"His  tools  were  made  honestly,  of  good  steel,  prop- 
erly tempered,  sold  at  a  reasonable  price,  and  'war- 
ranted,' which  meant  that  any  faulty  tool  would  be 
replaced,  even  if  it  were  employed  to  tap .  turpentine 
trees  in  North  Carolina.  His  name  became  a  mark  of 
good  quality,  and  was  known  all  over  the  country.  But 
calamity  came.  The  Genesee  River  got  in  an  angry 
mood  and  washed  the  upper  factory  over  the  falls,  into 
oblivion,  with  a  good  share,  more  than  half,  of  Deacon 
Barton's  hard-earned  capital. 

"He  had  left,  a  good  name,  a  wide  trade  connection, 
and  the  lower  factory.  A  great  struggle  and  some  goods 
bought  from  other  makers  enabled  him  to  fill  his  orders 
and  hold  the  trade.  The  lower  factory  was  increased, 
and  when  it  was  fitted  up  so  as  to  produce  the  product 
of  the  annihilated  one,  there  came  a  fire  and  swept  the 
whole  thing  off  the  ground.  Nothing  remained  but  a 
bed  of  smoking  coals — not  a  pound  of  anything  useful ; 
and  now  I  come  to  the  part  of  this  story  I  want  you  to 
observe. 

"Away  out  in  Ohio,  then  a  pioneer  Western  State, 
was  another  tool-making  works,  a  large  and  opulent 
company,  composed  of  true  men,  as  will  appear.  A 
meeting  of  the  directors  of  this  Ohio  company  was 
called;  their  mechanical  manager  was  called  in  and  in- 
structed to  go  at  once  to  Rochester  and  render  any 


104  NOTES    BY    A    STUDENT. 

assistance  he  could  to  Deacon  Barton?  and  request  him 
to  send  all  his  orders  to  the  Ohio  company,  to  be  filled 
on  his  account,  at  a  discount  that  exceeded  the  usual 
profits  of  trade;  also  to  send  for  any  goods  he  required 
at  Rochester,  and  for  aid  of  any  kind. 

''The  foreman  reached  Rochester  early  in  the  morn- 
ing, next  day2  and  went  down  to  the  ruins  of  the  burned 
factory,  yet  smoking  and  hot  in  places.  A  tall  old  man, 
with  bent  form  and  gray  hair,  was  walking  around  the 
black  spot,  a  picture  of  despair,  the  only  person  there. 
The  foreman,  asked  him  if  this  was  the  place  where  the 
Barton  Tool  Works  were  burned,  and  where  Deacon 
Barton  could  be  found?  'This  is  the  place,'  said  the 
old  man,  'and  I  am  Mr.  Barton.' 

"The  foreman  then  told  the  story  of  his  instructions, 
and  the  Deacon's  head  bowed  lower  and  lower  until  the 
end;  then,  reaching  out  his  hand  to  his  visitor,  it  was 
seen  that  his  face  was  covered  with  tears.  He  said,  in 
a  choking  effort,  'I  had  given  up,  but  I  will  try  again.' 

"That  day  and  the  next  plans  were  made  for  a  new 
factory,  and  various  other  matters  arranged.  It  was 
built  and  succeeded  wonderfully  and  quickly,  so  the 
Deacon  at  the  end  of  a  long  and  useful  life  went  out 
to  rest  in  the  cemetery  at  Rochester,  without  a  debt,  and 
without  having  ever  owned  a  dishonest  dollar  or  in- 
jured a  fellow  man.  I  was  the  man  sent  from  Ohio. ' ' 

My  uncle,  at  this  point,  like  the  venerable  Deacon, 
was  too  full  to  add  a  comment  on  the  changed  spirit 
of  our  time,  when  the  destruction  of  a  competing  works 
is  too  often  regarded  as  good  fortune  for  the  rest.  I 
knew  what  was  in  his  mind,  and  could  write  it  out  here, 
but  what  would  it  avail?  The  place  is  or  was  familiar 
to  my  uncle,  and  he  soon  went  on  talking. 


NOTES    BY    A    STUDENT.  105 

— "On  reaching  Rochester,  a  common  re- 
mark to  all  strangers  is:  'Here  is  where  Sam  Patch 
made  his  last  leap.'  Few  living  now  ever  heard  of  Sam 
Patch.  He  was  a  courageous  mountebank,  who  jumped 
from  high  places  into  the  water,  and  wound  up  by 
jumping  into  the  pool  below  Genesee  Falls,  and  never 
came  up  again. 

' '  There  was  formerly,  forty  years  ago,  and  may  be 
now,  if  we  could  see  through  the  hoarding,  a  saw  mill 
on  the  very  brink  of  the  falls,  so  near  indeed  that  the 
log  carriage  when  log  timber  was  sawed,  projected  out 
beyond  the  end  of  the  mill  and  over  the  boiling  pool 
below. 

"I  remember  when  cjuite  a  boy,  and  long  before  the 
falls  were  fenced  in  for  cupidity's  sake,  lying  down  on 
that  log  carriage  and  waiting  for  the  slow  feed  to  work 
me  out  over  the  falls,  looking  down  into  the  raging 
cauldron  below,  and  imagining  poor  Sam  Patch's 
ghostly  eyes  looking  upward.  I  could  not  move,  and 
had  to  wait  for  the  sawyer  to  'gig  back'  and  then  get 
off  with  a  cold  shiver  down  the  spine,  to  run  away  and 
never  see  Genesee  Falls  again  until  now,  and  not  even 
now,  because  they  are,  as  we  are  informed,  converted 
into  a  peep  show  at  so  much  a  head  for  the  privilege  to 
go  behind  the  high  fence. 

"Here  was  founded  one  of  the  important  indus- 
tries peculiar  to  this  country — the  manufacture  of  steam 
engine  governors,  or  regulators  which  is  a  better  name, 
as  a  distinct  article  of  trade.  It  is  near  forty  years  ago 
since  Junius  Judson  began  to  make  his  regulators  here 
and  sell  them  to  steam-engine  makers  all  over  the  coun- 
try, much  to  their  and  his  gain  too,  if  he  had  let  the 
lawyers  alone. 


106  NOTES    BY    A    STUDENT. 

"I  am  doubtful  if  he  ever  knew  the  real  points  of 
his  manufacture,  because  he  spent  most  of  his  time  in 
discussing  law  suits,  and  'graduated  openings/  meaning 
thereby  the  shape  of  the  ends  of  balanced  cylindrical 
valves  used.  These  were  trimmed  off  to  form  what  he 
called  a  'double  ogee/  a  thing  that  had  no  importance 
whatever.  The  real  points  were  first  and  mainly  an 
organized  manufacture  of  a  job  requiring  workman- 
ship far  beyond  the  resources  of  any  ordinary  machine 
shop;  and  second,  the  high  speed  and  consequent  high 
angle  of  the  suspension  links,  or  increase  of  centripetal 
force,  required  to  operate  the  valves. 

"Previous  to  this,  engine  governors  were  made  to 
swing  around  like  children  at  a  Maypole,  and  in  a  sedate 
manner  that  took  no  notice  of  a  change  of  five  per  cent 
in  the  speed  of  an  engine.  Between  these  leisurely 
moving  weights  and  the  'buterfly'  valves,  there  was 
commonly  a  lever  and  a  lot  of  loose- jointed  tackle  that 
would  catch  up  after  the  engine  had  been  diverging  for 
some  time  toward  a  faster  or  slower  gait.  Judson  al- 
tered all  this,  and  the  manufacture  became  permanent, 
as  it  should  have  done,  and  is  now  a  wide  and  useful 
one." 

— "Here,"  said  my  uncle,  as  we  pulled 
out  of  the  station  at  Rochester,  "we  begin  a  country 
worth  observing.  There  are  apple  orchards  without 
end,  a  veritable  apple  district,  cheese  making  and  high 
farming.  The  land  is  maintained  here,  and  is  one  of 
the  few  places  where  it  is  maintained.  Schools  and 
colleges  are  as  thick  as  grog  shops  in  Paisley,  and  the 
people  among  the  best,  physically  and  mentally,  in  the 
whole  country,  but  not  quite  as  good  as  farther  west 
and  adjoining,  in  what  is  called  the  'Western  Reserve.' 


NOTES    BY    A    STUDENT.  107 

The  name  came  from  some  kind  of  juggling  about  pro- 
prietorship and  a  concession  from  the  State  of  Vir- 
ginia, that  owned  the  land  to  the  same  extent  that  the 
prophet  Mahomet  did,  but  that  don't  matter  now;  what 
I  was  going  to  remark  is  that  hereabout,  and  there- 
about especially,  the  New  England  emigrants  came  a 
century  ago,  and  by  drinking  limestone  water,  working 
hard,  and  having  a  broad  environment,  their  bones  grew, 
their  minds  expanded,  and  their  views  broadened,  until 
in  the  second  or  third  generation  they  have  become  the 
best  people  on  the  continent,  that  is,  they  have  in  the 
highest  degree  industry,  ingenuity,  thrift?  and  educa- 
tion. 

"These  lakes  we  are  coming  to,  I  am  happy  to  say 
at  a  reasonable  speed,  are  a  wonderful  factor  in  the 
affairs  of  this  country.  Only  being  found  out,  however, 
in  these  latter  years.  The  iron,  copper,  and  timber  at 
the  upper  end  of  the  chain,  more  than  a  thousand 
miles  from  here,  has  made  their  importance  mainly,  but 
there  is  also  a  wonderful  commerce  to  supply  the  North- 
west— an  empire  of  itself — and  now  it  is  proposed,  as 
a  parting  stroke,  to  utilize  the  waters  where  they  pour 
down  at  Niagara,  150  feet  or  more  at  a  clean  leap,  to 
the  level  of  Lake  Ontario. 

"Of  this  latter  matter,  people  over-estimate  it.  What 
is  it  but  money  saving,  and  not  much  of  a  saving  at 
that  ?  A  concentration  of  manufactures  at  one  place 
instead  of  many  places.  As  an  increment  to  permanent 
wealth  such  works  are  a  good  property,  and  the  effect 
within  the  radius  of  possible  distribution  will  be  bene- 
ficial. Remember,  I  am  not  disparaging  the  scheme  at 
all  but  complaining  of  the  extravagant  and  provincial 
remarks  one  hears  about  'harnessing  Niagara,'  and  the 


108  NOTES    BY    A    STUDENT. 

dawn  of  a  commercial  millennium.  It  may  save  some 
coal  2  and  reduce  the  price  of  that,  but  the  price  of  coal 
does  not  depend  upon  demand  and  supply,  when  we 
come  to  think  of  it. ' ' 

This  view  of  the  Niagara  enterprise  was  new  to  me, 
and  seemingly  a  mistaken  one,  but  there  are  certainly 
some  extensive  social  points  to  be  considered  in  con- 
nection with  concentrated  and  segregated  manufactures. 
A  diversity  of  pursuits  seems  to  be  an  essential  feature 
in  the  normal  development  of  community,  and  manu- 
facturing towns  confined  to  a  single  industry  are  not  of 
the  best  among  municipalities. 

—We  are  now  skirting  along  the  Erie 
Canal,  and  I  took  the  opportunity  of  getting  my  uncle's 
views  of  electrical  propulsion  for  the  canal  traffic,  know- 
ing that  he  had  been  considering  the  subject.  He  was, 
I  imagine,  about  to  speak  of  it,  because  he  had  been 
figuring  for  some  time,  and  referred  to  his  note-book  as 
he  went  along. 

"This  scheme,"  said  he,  "is  what  may  be  called  a 
'slop  over,'  and  has  for  its  principal  object  a  franchise 
of  special  privilege,  with  some  kind  of  provision  to  get 
control  of  the  canal  traffic,  and  prevent  the  use  of  horses 
and  steam  engines. 

* '  The  mechanical  phases  of  the  matter  may  not  admit 
of  solution  at  this  time,,  but  it  is  hard  to  see  what  the 
object  is  of  generating  power  on  shore  and  conveying 
it  to  a  boat  by  a  trolley  wire;  but  they  say  'we  will  get 
power  from  the  falls.'  Suppose  they  do;  power  is  like 
potatoes,  and  will  bring  the  market  price  no  matter 
where  it  comes  from,  but  the  main  thing  is  that  water- 
craft  of  all  kinds  should  be  as  the  professors  call  it, 

'auto-mobile,'  and  the  objection  to  mules  is  in  the  fact 


NOTES    BY    A    STUDENT.  109 


that  mule  power  fails  at  the  end  of  the  tow  path,  as 
electric  motors  do  at  the  end  of  the  trolley  wire.  If 
accumulator  batteries  were  possible  in  the  case,  and  I 
do  not  see  why  they  are  not,  then  a  boat  might  roam 
around  at  pleasure,  but  then  comes  the  original  query: 
why  not  generate  the  power  on  board?  The  limitations 
are,  boats  with  a  four-knot  model,  that  cannot  be  ex- 
pedited with  an  electro  motor,  or  any  other  means,  and 
a  waterway  that  will  not  stand  the  'swash'  of  more 
speed  without  damage.  It  is  not  a  problem  of  power 
at  all,  and  much  less  the  kind  of  power,  but  of  various 
other  things,  including  an  electric  franchise. 

"Governor  Flower,  who  being  a  lawyer  and  a  banker 
must  know  all  about  engineering  matters,  started  this 
thing  in  a  rhetorical  section  of  his  message  last  year, 
and  is  now  one  of  the  company  proposing  to  use  electric 
apparatus.  I  don't  believe  in  it.  Am  sorry  that  I  can- 
not, but  there  are  so  many  who  do,  my  opinion  cannot 
matter  much.  There  are  two  kinds  of  progress  in  the 
world,  physical  and  moral,  and  it  is  about  time  that  the 
physical  part  came  to  anchor  until  the  moral  part 
catches  up. 

"Powerful  navies,  frying  machines,  canals  in  Central 
America,  and  a  tunnel  under  the  Straits  of  Dover,  six 
railways  across  the  American  continent,  and  fifty-mil- 
lion exhibitions  seem  mixed  up  with  strikes,  disorder, 
and  an  increase  of  crime,  especially  stealing.  I  can  well 
mind  when  a  certain  penitentiary  had  600  inmates.  Now 
it  has  2,600,  and  another  thousand  should  be  there  that 
would  have  been  convicted  and  sentenced  if  tried  at  the 
time  when  the  600  were  in  prison,  so  the  proportion  is 
six  to  one.  Strikes,  turmoil,  corruption,  discontent, 


110  NOTES    BY    A    STUDENT. 

socialism,    and   the   rest,    are   the   product    of   physical 
change  too  rapid  for  social  adaptation. 

"This  seems  a  long  way  from  an  electric  canal,  but 
there  is  a  connection.' 


CHAPTER    XVII. 

LA     SALLE'S     TRIP — NAPOLEON     ANNIHILATED — ST.     AN- 
THONY 'S      PALLS CATCHING      PICKEREL A      FISHY 

STORY ACCLIMATING    FRUIT OTHER    THINGS. 


—Hereabout,  in  1681,  La  Salle  crossed  the 
lakes  with  his  expedition  to  find  out  where  the  Missis- 
sippi River  went  to.  Crossed  but  did  not  take  to  land 
as  we  believe,  because  it  was  a  water  expedition.  He 
headed  for  the  Illinois  River,  going  to  land  somewhere 
near  where  Chicago  or  Milwaukee  now  stands.  Twenty- 
three  Frenchmen  and  eighteen  Indians  with  canoes, 
guns,  pemmican  and  various  tackle  of  the  frontier  kind. 
It  was  in  the  winter,  and  on  reaching  the  Illinois 
River,  they  "walked"  on  the  ice  down  to  Peoria  or 
thereabout,  dragging  their  boats,  and  then  paddled  on 
until  they  came  to  Chickasaw  Bluffs,  and  made  at  the 
Mississippi  a  camp,  or  "fort"  then  called,  and  named 
it  "Prudhomme. "  Then  again  on  and  on,  paddling 
with  a  current  running  100  miles  in  twenty-four  hours, 
the  weather  getting  warmer  and  spring  coming  in  Feb- 
ruary, until  they  came  safely  to  the  mouth  of  the  Ar- 
kansas River,  where  Napoleon,  a  considerable  city,  since 
stood.  Here  the  Frenchmen  went  ashore  and  acquired 
a  whole  Dominion  by  setting  up  a  pole  with  the  arms 
of  France  on  it,  the  greatest  "steal"  that  the  world 
has  ever  seen  since  the  time  of  Alexander  the  Great. 


NOTES    BY    A    STUDENT.  Ill 


Napoleon  is  gone  now.  The  Mississippi  made  a  swerve 
around  that  way  and  disintegrated  the  town,  pulverized 
the  substructure,  inverting  the  superstructures,  and 
moved  the  whole  down  to  the  gulf,  perhaps  in  the 
eternal  fitness  of  things  to  blot  out  the  theft  by  the 
Frenchmen.  The  circumstance  of  the  conquest  is  thus 
described  in  flowery  words  by  Parkman  the  historian : 

"On  that  day,  the  realm  of  France  received  on  parch- 
ment a  stupendous  accession.  The  fertile  plains  of 
Texas;  the  vast  basin  of  the  Mississippi  from  its  frozen 
northern  springs,Ho  the  sultry  bowers  of  the  gulf ;  from 
the  woody  ridges  of  the  Alleghanies  to  the  bare  peaks 
of  the  Rocky  Mountains — a  region  of  savannas  and 
forests,  sun-cracked  deserts,  and  grassy  prairies,  watered 
by  a  thousand  rivers,  ranged  by  a  thousand  warlike 
tribes,  passed  beneath  the  sceptre  of  the  Sultan  of  Ver- 
sailles, and  all  by  virtue  of  a  feeble  human  voice  in- 
audible at  half  a  mile." 

Who  can  say  after  that  there  is  no  poetry  in  history, 
and  that  Buckle  does  not  deserve  eternal  infamy  for 
reducing  history  to  a  science? 

—We  took  boat  at  -Buffalo  and  here  for 
the  first  time  I  inquired  about  my  uncle's  plans.  He 
paid  the  bills,  and  I  as  a  guest  had  no  further  privilege 
as  to  course  and  object  than  to  inquire. 

"We  are  going  to  New  Orleans,"  said  he,  "if  money, 
patience  and  health  hold  out.  I  came  around  this  way 
to  show  you  two  systems  of  inland  navigation  as  differ- 
ent as  chalk  is  from  cheese.  One  written  about,  photo- 
graphed, engraved  until  every  woman  and  child  in  the 
land  understands  it — a  system  rising  by  evolution  all 
the  time  onward.  I  mean  lake  commerce,  or  boats 
rather.  The  other,  like  Shakespeare's  'Seven  Ages,' 


112  NOTES    BY    A    STUDENT. 

with  a  youth,  boyhood,  manhood,  decline  and  fall.  I 
mean  the  river  boats  and  the  commerce  on  them.  The 
first,  you  can  see  and  read  about,  and  that  note-book 
you  may  as  well  hang  up  for  the  present.  No  one  will 
care  for  any  opinions  of  yours  on  lake  matters.  They 
don't  require  your  views  or  mine,  besides  you  will  need 
all  your  paper  and  energies  further  on. 

"This  steamer  is  typical  of  the  whole  lot,  perfect  in 
all  appointments,  including  an  opinion  of  every  one 
on  board,  that  it  is  the  finest  service  in  the  world,  and 
it  may  be,  at  least  ought  to  be.  A  grievous  cupidity 
and  shameless  utilitarianism  has  discovered  that  a 
hideous  form  of  steam  barges  can  earn  more  money  in 
carrying  dead  loads  than  a  regular  steam-ship  can,  and 
now  seek  to  debase  the  whole  tribe  with  fiat  bottoms, 
porcine  snoots,  and  covered-in  decks,  a  kind  of  portable 
warehouse,  called  Svhalebacks. '  If  you  see  one  don't 
mention  it,  let  us  pursue  our  journey  in  comfort." 

I  notice  in  these  Lake  engines  the  commendable  feat- 
ure of  longer  connecting  rods,  more  accessibility  all  over, 
and  what  is  certainly  advanced  practice  in  marine  en- 
gine building.  Here  and  there  the  sections  seem  fear- 
fully scant,  especially  in  the  castings,  but  the  factor 
of  safety  is  no  doubt  as  usual  based  on  the  distance  be- 
tween ports. 

We  went  up  to  Cleveland,  Toledo,  and  into  the  De- 
troit River,  a  most  wonderful  stream  having  most  of 
the  features  of  a  river,  and  lacking  some.  It  is  like  the 
Niagara,  St.  Clair  and  St.  Marie  Rivers,  a  connection 
between  lakes,  always  clear,  at  one  level  and  flowing 
in  peace. 

From  Detroit,  which  seems  to  be  the  best  paved, 
sewered,  lighted  and  managed  city  in  America,  we  went 


NOTES    BY    A    STUDENT.  113 

through  the  river  and  Lakes  St.  Clair,  Huron  and  the 
Sault  Ste.  Marie  Canal  into  Great  Superior  to  Duluth, 
and  thence  to  St.  Paul  by  rail. 

My  uncle  had  intended  to  go  on  to  St.  Joseph,  but 
changed  his  mind.  "The  sewer  of  sewers,"  said  he, 
"the  Missouri  River  has  only  one  really  useful  function, 
that  of  creating  sedimentary  land.  It  is  a  builder, 
leveler,  fertilizer  and  irrigator  of  endless  cornfields,  and 
generator  of  miasmatic  effluvia,  but  it  has  made  an  em- 
pire withal.  It  is  all  over  the  country,  first  one  place 
and  then  another,  bristling  with  snags,  spotted  with 
sand-bars  and  a  terror  to  steam-boats.  When  I  was 
younger  and  knew  less,  I  handled  the  puppet  levers  up 
there.  It  is  not  a  pleasant  recollection.  We  will  take 
to  water  here  and  go  down  stream. ' ' 

— St.  Paul,  St.  Anthony,  and  Minneapolis 
are  in  effect  one  city,  and  hereabout  is  the  most  romantic 
place  I  have  seen  on  the  Mississippi  River  except  at 
Lake  Pepin.  St.  Anthony  long  ago,  twenty  years  ago 
or  more,  was  consolidated  with  Minneapolis,  which  was 
a  great  mistake,  in  so  far  as  names.  St.  Anthony  was 
on  the  eastern  side  of  the  river,  had  a  beautiful  name, 
while  "Minneapolis,"  a  combination  of  Indian  and 
Greek,  is  perhaps  the  most  ridiculous  name  on  the  con- 
tinent— a  childish  and  provincial  conceit. 

Here  the  Mississippi  tumbles  over  a  cliff  82  feet  in 
all,  and  affords  a  wonderful  water  power.  There  is  a 
deep  stratum  of  yellowish-white  sandstone  of  thickness 
not  apparent,  and  over  this  a  capping  of  hard  rock  like 
the  crust  of  a  pie.  As  the  water  wore  away  the  sand- 
stone beneath  the  falls,  the  shelving  top  rock  would 
break  off  and  fall  into  the  pool  below.  This  process 
went  on  continually  but  not  very  fast,  until  at  great 


114  NOTES   BY   A   STUDENT. 

expense  artificial  work  was  made  by  the  Federal  Govern- 
ment and  the  State  to  stop  the  falls  from  receding. 

The  soft  sandstone  is  quite  a  factor  in  the  develop- 
ment of  the  water  power  plants  here.  To  arrange  one, 
a  tunnel  for  a  tail  race  or  discharge  way  is  dug  under 
the  cap  rock  out  to  the  desired  site  for  a  wheel  pit; 
another  canal  is  made,  on  top,  to  conduct  the  water 
from  above  the  fallsj  and  then  a  well  hole  is  cut  through 
the  cap  rock  to  connect  the  tunnel  and  canal.  This 
forms  the  wheel  pit.  The  soft  sandstone  becomes  in- 
durated as  soon  as  exposed,  and  is  not  much  eroded  by 
the  wash  of  the  water. 

It  is  as  I  said  a  romantic  place.  Just  below  is  Fort 
Snelling,  on  a  high  picturesque  bluff  or  "butte"  as  they 
would  say  in  California,  and  there  are  the  falls  of 
' '  Minnehaha, ' '  which  next  to  Minneapolis  is  the  farthest 
from  euphony  that  the  namers  could  get.  These  falls 
are  on  the  Minnetonka  River,  or  creek,  the  waste-way 
for  Lake  Minnetonka,  a  dozen  miles  away;  and  here 
comes  in  a  fish  story,  the  first  I  believe  in  these  notes. 

— My  uncle  had  an  engagement  to  look 
over  the  retaining  works  at  the  falls  with  some  civil 
engineers,  and  as  I  never  took  much  interest  in  static 
structures  of  any  kind  I  concluded  to  go  out  to  Lake 
Minnetonka  with  a  picnic  party  of  some  local  society. 
I  was  a  stranger,  knew  no  one  and  dropped  into  the 
procession  mechanically.  At  the  lake  as  soon  as  the 
train  stopped,  people  scattered  every  way,  some  to  a 
steamer,  some  to  hotels,  and  many  out  in  boats,  until  I 
stood  alone  staring  around  for  company,  then  started 
to  wander  around  the  north  side  of  the  lake. 

I  came  shortly  upon  an  old  Noah,  who  was  pitching  a 
punt  he  had  been  caulking,  and  asked  him  where  I  could 


NOTES    BY    A    STUDENT.  115 


get  a  boat?  "All  out/'  said  he.  "Good  day  for 
pickerel."  This  excited  my  interest  at  once. 

"Pickerel,  that  is  the  same  as  pike,  fine  fish,  and 
plenty  in  the  lake,  but  them  fellers  can't  catch  'em," 
said  the  boatman,  twirling  his  thumb  toward  a  whole 
fleet  of  boats  out  in  the  lake  trolling  with  long  lines. 
"No  pickerel  out  there,  only  some  fool  half -grown  ones. 
The  old  chaps  are  lying  in  the  shade  along  in  the  shore 
next  the  grass  (bulrushes)."  I  soon  struck  up  a  bar- 
gain for  the  old  punt,  a  trolling  line  about  three  hun- 
dred yards  long,  spoon  hook  and  tackle.  "Now,"  said 
the  old  chap,  "I  must  go  to  town,  don't  mind  them 
dern  fools,  just  you  go  down  round  the  grass  there  on 
the  shady  side,  keep  close  in,  hold  the  line  in  your 
teeth  so  you  can  row  and  feel;  keep  close  in  and  you'll 
get  more  fish  than  the  whole  lot  of  them  town  fellers." 

I  had  never  seen  a  pickerel,  never  held  a  trolling  line, 
but  had  fished  a  good  deal,  and  would  have  made  a  small 
bet  there  was  not  a  fish  six  inches  long  within  five  miles 
of  there.  I  started  out,  run  out  the  long  slim  line,  took 
it  in  my  teeth  and  rowed  along  "close  in."  Directly 
the  spoon  hook  caught,  I  knew  it  would,  and  it  came 
near  hauling  me  over  the  stern  of  the  boat.  I  dropped 
the  oars  and  grabbed  the  line,  when  away  back,  at 
least  a  hundred  yards,  an  agile  fish  sprang  into  the 
air  in  a  curve,  and  disappeared.  A  tugging  at  the 
line,  and  the  idea  at  last  burst  upon  me,  '  *  I  have  hooked 
a  pickerel ! ' '  Oh2  the  excitement !  I  hauled  him  in ; 
about  three  pounds  weight,  and  then  I  went  "into  busi- 
ness. ' ' 

The  old  boatman  was  right.  By  keeping  in  and 
dragging  the  trolling  line  around  the  rushes  I  captured 
nine  fish.  All  I  could  carry,  and  when  the  people  col- 


116  NOTES    BY    A    STUDENT. 

lected  to  go  home?  here  was  I  with  the  only  catch  worth 
considering.  I  had  a  thousand  questions  to  answer, 
and  on  the  way  in,  laid  down  to  old  fishermen  the  laws 
of  pickerel  fishing:  "shady  side,  close  in,  bulrushes  and 
the  rest." 

My  uncle  met  the  train,  and  was  amazed  at  the  fish. 
"Where  did  you  get  'em,  Tech?"  said  he.  "Out  at  the 
lake,"  I  answered,  but  no  mention  of  my  catching  them. 
Oh  no,  my  uncle  was  too  astute  for  such  a  story.  I 
have  not  ventured  it  but  a  few  times  since,  and  never 
nearer  than  a  thousand  miles  from  Lake  Minnetonka. 
There  is  a  mental  reserve  about  its  incorporation  here 
without  an  affidavit. 

—There  is  one  hope  of  Minneapolis.  It  is 
only  three  miles  from  St.  Paul,  or  counting  suburbs  less 
than  two  miles,  and  built  all  along  the  way,  so  it  is  to 
be  hoped  that  St.  Paul  will  some  day  swallow  the  Indio- 
Greek  town  and  spread  its  name  over  all. 

St.  Paul  is  a  solid  old  city,  old  as  cities  go  in  this 
land,  and  is  at  the  head  of  navigation  on  the  Mississippi 
River.  From  here  to  the  falls,  three  miles  or  so,  is  a 
succession  of  shoals  and  rapids.  There  is  a  projected 
canal,  as  there  is  everywhere  at  this  day.  There  is  good 
reason  for  one  here,  however,  where  they  make  9,500,000 
barrels  of  flour  in  a  year,  and  saw  a  large  amount  of 
timber,  besides  ship  a  world  of  wheat  and  other  products 
from  the  Falls. 

— Going  down  to  St.  Paul,  my  uncle 
pointed  out  some  fruit  trees  on  the  way,  and  said, 
"Tech,  set  down  in  that  note-book  of  yours  that  vege- 
table life  like  animal  life  becomes  acclimated,  otherwise 
you  may  write  that  the  first  settlers  here  were  fools. 
They  thought  nothing  would  or  could  grow  up  here 


NOTES    BY    A    STUDENT.  117 


because  it  was  so  cold.  Wheat  for  bread  was  carried 
from  St.  Louis,  and  now  it  is  a  wheat  country.  Fruit 
was  not  thought  of,  except  some  little  wild  plums  about 
the  size  of  olives,  and  the  orchards  were  confined  to 
Siberian  crab-apples.  These  little  red  fellows  looked 
delicious,  and  became  edible  after  being  well  frozen  and 
compounded  with  an  equal  weight  of  strong  sugar.  That 
myth  lasted  twenty  years  or  more,  and  then  apples, 
pears  and  other  hard-wood  fruit  trees  were  pi  ante  1  and 
throve,  not  at  once  but  gradually. 

"It  is  cold  here,  terribly  cold  in  the  winter,  and  hot 
in  the  summer,  but  that  don't  matter,  climate  is  to 
people  an  accident.  The  harsher  it  is  the  more  they 
admire  it." 


CHAPTER    XVIII. 

HOW    A    STEAMBOAT    FINDS    ITS    WAY THE    TIPPECANOE 

ESTATE GENERAL  HARRISON  ON  ANCIENT  MOUNDS — 

A  LEARNED  PRESIDENT "WHEN  DEAD  HOW  SOON 

WE  ARE  FORGOT" — A  TOBOGGAN  FEAT. 


—My  uncle,  before  he  went  to  sea,  was  a 
river  engineer,  and  always  claimed  that  it  was  the  best 
school  in  the  world  to  teach  a  man  what  he  calls  "emer- 
gencies. ' ' 

The  art  of  emergencies,  so  to  speak,  is  one  con- 
tingent on  human  nature,  an  inborn  trait.  Some  men 
are  never  so  cool  and  composed  as  when  they  are  in  a 
"scrape."  Then  the  intense  activity  of  the  mind  in 
excitement  takes  the  normal  course  of  reasoning.  In 
others  explodes,  so  to  speakj  scatters,  and  becomes  idiotic, 


118  NOTES    BY    A    STUDENT. 

still  training  and  example  have  much  to  do  with  the 
matter. 

Steam-boating  in  the  early  times,  and  even  now  what 
is  left  of  it  on  the  Mississippi  and  its  great  tributaries, 
is  full  of  "emergencies."  When  at  sea  one  becomes 
nervous  as  soon  as  land  is  neared,  but  here  a  great  boat 
that  will  crush  like  an  egg  shell,  goes  thundering  along 
on  the  darkest  nights,  and  in  wild  storms,  between  two 
shores  within  hailing  distance,  past  snags  and  wrecks, 
over  bars,  around  bends,  in  some  mysterious  manner  no 
one  can  explain  and  never  touches  anything. 

Before  we  reached  St.  Paul,  I  asked  my  uncle  about 
this  matter  of  steering  at  night,  and  did  not  get  much 
salisf action,  his  remarks  were  something  as  follows: 

^That's  the  old  question,  the  first  one  a  landsman 
asks,  and  the  last  one  a  boatman  answers,  and  one  that 
has  never  been  answered  in  a  manner  to  convey  much 
information.  A  pilot  can't  tell  you  how  he  finds  his 
way;  in  fact  he  don't  know,  and  does  not  dare  to  study 
about  it.  If  he  did  he  would  get  scared,  and  produce 
an  'emergency.'  There  is  an  intuitive  perception  of 
where  you  are  that  arises  from  a  variety  of  things,  that 
would  make  up  a  quadratic  equation. 

"First  there  is  time,  an  unconscious  measure  of  how 
far  you  have  come  from  the  last  point;  there  is  sound, 
not  an  echo,  although  that  sometimes  is  observed,  but 
a  kind  of  reflection  of  sound  from  the  shores,  and  there 
is  the  hill  line  or  timber  line  always  visible,  except  in 
fog;  also  the  appearance  of  the  water  or  reflection  from 
it,  and  finally  the  feel  of  the  boat.  Any  depth  less  than 
twice  the  draught  is  'felt.'  The  vibrations  change,  the 
engines  slow  down,  and  the  stern  sinks  or  seems  to 
whenever  the  water  shoals,  because  of  water  piling  up 


NOTES    BY    A    STUDENT.  119 

at  the  head.  I  cannot  tell  you  nor  can  any  one  else,  how 
a  pilot  finds  the  way, .but  we  will  see  all  this  as  we  go 
down  the  river. 

"I  don't  like  this  St.  Paul  arrangement  at  all,  you 
will  miss  a  good  deal.  The  Ohio  River  is  the  ideal  one 
for  steam-boating,  comfortable,  calm  and  beautiful  at 
common  stages,  but  outrageous  in  its  fluctuations. 

"Joseph  Cowell,  an  English  actor,  who  traveled  here 
before  Dickens  did,  described  the  Ohio  River  as  a 
'thousand  miles  long,  a  mile  wide,  and  eighteen  inches 
deep,  frozen  up  for  one  half  the  year  and  dried  up  the 
other  half.'  He  was  here  in  the  summer;  six  months 
later  he  might  have  seen  sixty-three  feet  added  to  the 
depth.  The  rise  and  fall  in  the  middle  section2  about 
Cincinnati^  is  sixty-three  feet.  I  have  steam-boated  all 
day  over  cornfields  in  the  lower  river,  and  six  months 
later  seen  a  boat  'sparred'  over  the  bar  at  the  'Grand 
Chain'  at  the  same  place,  or  near  it,  but  it  is  a  beautiful 
river.  For  eight  hundred  miles  from  where  it  begins 
at  Pittsburgh,  there  is  not  a  break  in  the  green  hills  that 
form  its  boundary.  Never  did  a  river  saw  out  such  a 
uniform  bed.  It  is  like  a  keyway  in  a  long  shaft.  The 
sedimentary  lands  shift  from  side  to  side,  but  the  whole 
width  between  the  hills  is  the  same,  and  even  their 
fertility  is  invariable.  Except  at  Louisville,  there  is 
not  a  rapid  or  ripple  in  the  thousand  miles  that  a  child 
could  not  row  a  boat  over." 

I  was  of  course  much  interested  in  this  account  of  the 
Ohio,  and  managed  its  continuance.  The  river  is  full 
of  legends,  Indian  and  other.  It  is  a  frontier  line  be- 
tween the  North  and  the  South,  and  I  much  regretted 
our  trip  had  not  been  down  the  Ohio  Valley,  but  as  it 
was?  a  good  deal  was  learned ;  here  is  the  continuance : 


120  NOTES    BY    A    STUDENT. 

' '  At  North  Bend,  near  Cincinnati,  sixteen  miles  below, 
is,  all  things  considered,  one  of  the  most  romantic  places 
on  the  river.  I  don't  use  that  term  in  its  common 
sense,  for  happily  there  are  no  romantic  places  in  the 
way  of  rugged  inaccessible  cliffs,  not  worth  a  dollar  a 
square  mile,  which  seems  to  be  the  main  characteristic 
of  romantic  places.  Here  all  is  peace,  the  lands  are 
tillable,  the  hills  climable,  and  the  water  everywhere 
accessible,  flowing  quietly  and  available  for  navigation 
and  drinking. 

"At  North  Bend  is  a  pass  about  one  hundred  feet 
high,  a  notch  in  the  hill  between  the  Ohio  and  the  Big 
Miami  Rivers.  The  latter  joins  the  Ohio  six  miles  below, 
but  at  the  'gap,'  the  Ohio  bends  to  the  north  and  the 
Miami  to  the  south,  so  the  two  rivers  come  within  half 
a  mile  of  each  other  divided  by  a  ridge  through  which 
a  tunnel  was  made  about  1840,  for  the  passage  of  a  canal, 
but  the  main  thing  of  interest  to  be  pointed  out  here  is 
that  this  was  the  estate  of  General  Harrison,  elected 
President  of  the  United  States  in  1840,  and  harrassed 
to  death  by  doctors  and  office  seekers  a  short  time  after. 

"It  was  a  grand  estate,  lying  between  two  rivers  for 
a  distance  of  seven  miles,  averaging  a  mile  or  more  in 
width,  a  high  ridge  or  hill  of  300^  feet  elevation,  extend- 
ing all  the  way,  except  at  the  pass  where  the  General's 
log  cabin  was  situated  on  the  Ohio  side.  This  old  cabin, 
a  real  log  one,  where  the  General  lived,  was  burned  down 
about  1860,  the  foundation  yet  remaining  to  be  pointed 
out  to  the  curious. 

"Set  down  in  those  notes,  which  are  no  doubt  to  be- 
come permanent  in  the  annals  of  this  country,  that  the 
ninth  President  of  the  United  States  was  and  is  a 


NOTES    BY    A    STUDENT.  121 


stranger  to  his  countrymen.     They  have  never  known 
much  about  him. 

"It  is  a  common  impression  in  this  country  that  the 
log  cabin  President  of  the  United  States  was  a  wild, 
hard-cider  candidate  from  the  uncultured  West.  Never 
was  there  a  greater  mistake,  General  William  Henry 
Harrison  was,  judged  by  fair  standards,  the  most  learned 
man  that  ever  sat  in  the  presidential  chair.  I  know  that 
most  people  will  laugh  at  such  a  proposition,  but  it  is 
true.  Who  besides,  among  the  Presidents  of  the  United 
States,  has  been  a  learned  man?  What  are  their  legacies 
in  the  way  of  science,  art,  or  even  law?  A  politician 
is  never  a  learned  man,  or  to  state  it  better,  a  learned 
man  is  never  a  politician.  George  Washington  was  far 
and  away  the  most  thinking  man,  down  to  Harrison, 
and  he  was  both  thinking  and  learned,  he  was  a  profound 
thinker,  and  his  views  were  qualified  by  scientific  attain- 
ments of  a  high  order. 

"In  proof  of  this,  there  is  on  record  a  paper  of  his, 
contributed  to  the  Cincinnati  Historical  Society  about 
1836,  on  the  probable  age  of  mural  remains  in  the  Ohio 
Valley,  that  is,  or  ought  to  be  a  classic  in  our  language. 
I  defy  anyone  to  produce  an  essay  that,  aside  from  a 
wonderful  diction,  gives  more  evidence  of  analytical 
thought. 

"On  the  General's  lands  at  the  summit  or  point  of 
the  ridge  near  the  junction  of  the  Ohio  and  Miami 
Rivers,  is  one  of  those  ancient  mounds,  a  most  wonder- 
ful one,  that  General  Harrison  investigated  in  a  true 
scientific  way.  It  belongs  to  the  class  called  military, 
a  fortification  in  fact,  enclosing  seventeen  acres.  The 
walls  are  now  in  places  more  than  six  feet  high  on  the 
inside,  the  outer  angles  being  most  of  the  way  a  con- 


122  NOTES    BY    A    STUDENT. 


tinuation  of  the  steep  hillside.  It  overlooks  vast  plains 
of  fertile  land  for  many  miles  every  way,  had  bastions 
and  towers7  also  great  cisterns  to  contain  water  or  grain, 
or  both,  the  inner  walls  of  these  being  burned  clay,  and 
solid  and  hard,  even  now. 

"The  General  had  one  of  these  excavated  and  cleaned, 
also  made  careful  maps,  not  only  of  this,  but  other 
works  of  the  mound-builders,  which  are  thick  there- 
about, the  great  one  at  Miamiville  being  only  a  few 
miles  away.  His  paper  on  the  subject  of  these  mounds, 
as  I  have  claimed,  is  a  classic  in  our  language,  also 
more  cogent  in  character  than  anything  in  the  Monu- 
ments of  the  Mississippi  Valley,  by  Squier  and  Davis. 

"The  premises  from  which  age  was  inferred  was  the 
timber  grown,  especially  on  the  works  at  Fortress  Point, 
on  his  own  estate,  and  were  most  ingenious.  It  is  many 
years  since  I  read  this  paper,  but  the  impression  on  my 
mind  was  such  that  I  can  repeat  the  substance  of  it 
now.  The  General  says:  'When  the  land  is  denuded 
of  its  verdure,  as  was  necessary  in  erecting  these  vast 
works,  and  when,  after  their  term  of  use,  the  natural 
forest  began  the  work  of  again  clothing  the  land  with 
trees,  there  was  a  cycle  of  changes,  such  as  is  observ- 
able in  all  in  this  country.  The  first  growth  is  not  that 
of  the  surrounding  forest,  but  is  usually  of  one  kind  of 
timber.  This  yields  to  destruction  by  lightning,  in- 
sects and  other  causes,  and  other  species  take  the  place 
of  the  destroyed  trees.  These  changes  go  on  until  at 
the  end  of  a  period  within  some  bounds  of  conjecture, 
the  forest  on  the  denuded  area  assumes  its  original  char- 
acter and  diversity.  At  Fort  Hill  there  is  no  discern- 
able  difference  between  the  forest  inside  and  outside  the 
works.  On  the  walls  stand  the  same  trees  as  in  the 


NOTES    BY    A    STUDENT.  123 

forest  around,  and  of  the  same  size  and  diversity,  and 
from  this  we  may  gain  some  clue  to  the  vast  period  that 
has  elapsed  since  the  works  were  erected. ' 

"Now  I  do  not  know  that  one  sentence  of  this  is 
exact,  but  it  is  the  idea,  clothed  in  less  perfect  language, 
and  I  ask  who  among  our  political  Presidents  has  been 
capable  of  such  a  paper?  General  Harrison  took  a 
great  interest  in  the  speculations  of  his  brother-in-law, 
John  Cleves  Symmes,  the  'hollow-world  man,'  who  is 
buried  near  by  the  General's  tomb,  and  has  on  the  top 
of  a  marble  column  at  his  grave  a  sculptured  hollow 
globe.  I  do  not  know  that  General  Harrison  accepted 
the  views  of  Symmes,  but  we  know  he  was  a  military 
man,  a  jurist  and  a  scientific  man,  who  left  on  the 
country  around  his  home  a  profound  respect  for  his 
learning. 

"Log  cabin,  forsooth!  Those  rough  hewed  logs 
plastered  with  mortar  to  fill  the  cracks,  and  roofed  with 
riven  boards,  surrounded  more  learning  and  honesty 
than  can  be  extracted  from  forty  palaces,  occupied  by 
public  men  of  our  time,  and  think  of  the  scant  honor  it 
brings  to  his  memory ! 

"The  General,  by  his  request,  was  buried  on  an  emi- 
nence near  his  old  log  cabin,  overlooking  the  wide 
sweep  of  the  Ohio,  and  visible  for  miles  from  passing 
boats.  They  built  up  a  plain  rectangle  of  brick,  about 
four  by  eight  feet,  and  put  a  large  stone  on  top,  also 
put  a  picket  fence  around  the  grave. 

"The  estate  fell  into  other  hands,  much  of  it,  and 
finally  only  one  representative  remained,  the  Hon.  J. 
Scott  Harrison,  who  lived  at  the  'Point,'  father  of  the 
late  President,  and  who  by  ill  health  could  not  attend 
to  more  than  his  own  home.  The  fence  around  the 


124  NOTES    BY    A    STUDENT. 

General's  grave  rotted  down,  the  hogs  got  in,  and,  by 
rooting  around  the  shallow  walls,  caused  the  brickwork 
to  crumble,  and  our  country  came  near  the  disgrace  of 
having  their  most  learned  and  virtuous  President  rooted 
out  of  his  grave  by  swine. 

"The  governor  of  Ohio,  by  a  communication  to  the 
State  legislature,  secured  an  appropriation  to  repair 
the  grave  and  grounds,  which  was  done  about  1868. 

"If  a  man  feels  constrained  to  do  any  great  act  of  a 
public  nature,  and  has  any  pride  in  the  perpetuation 
of  his  name,  he  should  at  once  get  out  of  a  republic,  or 
out  of  this  country  at  least?  where  as  Rip  Van  Winkle 
says,  'when  we  are  dead,  how  soon  we  are  forgot.'  Of 
course,  one  of  my  pursuits  has  a  first  regard  for  all 
kinds  of  learning  connected  with  natural  sciences,  and 
why  not?  Nothing  is  more  ridiculous  than  a  man  with 
his  head  crammed  full  of  the  Greek  and  Latin  classics, 
walking  around  blind.  The  movements  and  forces  of 
nature  are  to  him  a  sealed  book.  He  does  not  know 
what  anything  is  made  of.  The  animal,  vegetable  and 
mineral  elements  are  to  him  a  mystery.  Dogs,  horses 
and  sheep,  trees,  potatoes  and  grass,  wood,  iron  and 
coal  are  substances.  Only  this,  and  nothing  more. 
Movements  are  to  him  profound  phenomena,  inscrutable 
mysteries,  not  catalogued  with  the  Greek  and  Roman 
gods  or  the  phantoms  of  rhapsodical  nonsense.  I  do 
not  know  if  General  Harrison  was  a  Greek  and  Latin 
scholar  or  not,  or  if  he  had  acquired  a  knowledge  of 
metaphysics  and  moral  philosophy.  But  of  one  thing1 
we  can  be  surej  he  knew  how  to  construct  a  tunnel  on 
scientific  principles,  also  knew  the  essential  elements 
that  should  enter  into  the  administration  of  human 
government. 


NOTES    BY    A    STUDENT.  125 

"One  thing  he  failed  in  was  the  angle  of  repose,  or 
the  angle  of  stability  for  loose  soil.  One  day  his  horse 
slid  from  the  top  to  the  bottom  of  an  embankment,  at 
Cleves,  when  the  tunnel  was  being  made  there,  fifty 
feet  or  more,  without  unseating  the  General.  It  was  a 
fine  feat,  well  remembered  in  the  neighborhood,  and 
will  be  told  of  to  this  day  by  old  residents  there,  if  any 
are  left  now,  which  I  doubt." 


CHAPTER    XIX. 

LOW-PRESSURE    STEAMBOAT   ENGINES ALSO    COMPOUND   EN- 
GINES  AN    OLD    WATER-WORKS    ENGINE HOW    CITIES 

ARE  BUILT THE  FIRST  OF  STEAM-MOVED  VALVES — 

AN  ASTONISHING   CARPET  BAG CINCINNATI 

AS    AN    ORIGINAL    TOWN. 

The  account  of  General  Harrison  was  extremely  in- 
teresting to  myself,  as  well  as  some  others  who  were 
listening,  but  my  main  interest  in  the  Ohio  River  was 
centered  in  its  early  navigation  and  steamboats,  and  the 
next  lecture,  to  so  call  it,  I  deftly  shifted  to  that  subject, 
and  have  the  following: 

"My  time  of  steamboating  was  long  ago,"  said  my 
uncle.  "Things  are  changed  now,  some  for  the  better, 
most  of  them  I  suspect,  but  for  wild,  reckless,  ingenious 
and  dare-devil  engineering  the  olden  time  never  had  or 
never  will  have  a  parallel. 

"No  one  'picked  up'  that  trade.  It  required  years 
and  years,  with  youth  and  vigor  to  help.  Nothing  from 
books  those  times,  you  had  to  see,  learn,  feel  and  do. 

"I  named  vigor.  There  were  no  balanced  valves 
down  to  1850,  and  it  required  some  weight  and  muscle 


126  NOTES    BY    A    STUDENT. 

to  pull  up  a  six-inch  poppet  valve  against  one  hundred 
and  twenty-five  to  one  hundred  and  fifty  pounds  of 
steam.  Not  every  one  could  do  it  with  the  leverage  pro- 
vided, and  it  was  common  to  handle  the  throttle  so  as 
to  avoid  full  pressure  in  the  side  pipes.  By  leaving 
the  water  cocks  open  and  going  a  little  slow,  the  exhaust 
valves  were  easier  to  raise,  but  it  was  no  place  for  a 
weak  man  or  a  timid  one.  There  were  complications, 
too.  These  western  men  were  not  dumb  or  slow. 

"There  were  condensing  engines  in  those  times,  the 
Natchez  on  the  lower  river  about  1848,  the  Northerner 
and  Southerner  in  1850;  cylinders  six  feet  bore,  and  a 
hold  full  of  condensing  apparatus,  that  was  all  pulled 
out  in  due  time  and  stowed  ashore.  It  was  too  clumsy, 
heavy  and  difficult  to  handle,  expensive  to  maintain,  and 
when  balanced  up  against  the  saving  in  coal,  it  footed 
up  like  the  Indian's  gun,  'cost  more  than  it  come  to.' 

"The  Northerner  and  Southerner  were  built  at  Cin- 
cinnati, I  think,  at  least  the  engines  were,  and  it  was 
the  pride  of  the  people  there  to  walk  through  the 
cylinders.  A  man  five  feet  eight  could  do  it  with  his 
hat  off,  and  never  forget  it,  but  this  is  not  all,  we  had 
compound  engines  those  times,  not  sham  ones  or  make- 
shifts but  real  tandem  compounds,  cylinders  about  six- 
teen and  thirty  inches  bore. 

"First  was  the  Hawkey e  with  a  heavy  flywheel  and 
clutches  for  the  wheels.  One  night  the  men  made  a  miss 
with  the  clutches,  threw  both  out  at  once,  and  the  en- 
gine with  about  three  revolutions  threw  the  flywheel, 
part  of  it  through  the  cabin  and  the  remainder  down 
through  the  hull,  the  boat  following  in  ten  minutes  and 
drowning  about  two  score  of  people.  Next  came  the 
Clippers  No.  1  and  2  with  compound  engines,  and  the 


NOTES    BY    A    STUDENT.  127 


'Memphis.  The  last  one  I  knew  well  and  handled  myself 
for  a  time. 

"The  compound  engines  were  set  amidships  and  took 
up  a  deal  of  room  in  a  weak  part  of  the  vessel.  The 
shaft,  too,  was  a  nuisance?  terribly  in  the  way,  but  they 
were  compound  engines  just  the  same  as  the  Elders  in- 
troduced on  the  Clyde  in  1870  and  before. 

"Cincinnati  was  a  queer  place  those  times,  with  more 
originality  in  an  engineering  way  than  could  be  found 
elsewhere  on  this  continent.  There  is  running  there 
now  a  pair  of  water-work  engines,  poppet  valve  con- 
densing, built  about  1844,  or  fifty  years  ago,  that  per- 
sistently refuse  to  be  beaten  by  others  added  since,  down 
to  the  present  time.  There  are  half  a  dozen  engines 
there,  including  a  bull  Cornish  one  eight  feet  bore, 
twelve  feet  stroke?  all  standing  around  these  old  steam- 
boat engines.  They  go  on  however,  a  monument  to  old- 
time  skill. 

"Steam  fire  engines  were  originated  there  about  1850, 
and  direct  acting  steam  pumps  with  steam-moved  valves 
were  invented  about  the  same  time,  by  a  man  named 
Wilson,  in  Cincinnati,  much  to  the  consternation  of  a 
great  pump  combination,  formed  about  1872,  when  this 
fact  became  known,  as  it  did  in  a  very  sensational  kind 
of  way?  which  I  may  tell  of  some  time.  Just  now  I  am 
speaking  of  steamboats. 

"They  kept  on  building  them  larger  and  faster,  until 
a  speed  of  eighteen  miles  an  hour  was  reached ;  not 
over  a  measured  mile  and  by  triangular  shore  marks 
as  is  done  now-a-days.  They  had  a  better  plan.  For  a 
time  the  packets  between  Pittsburgh  and  Cincinnati 
were  the  swiftest  boats,  and  then  came  a  competing  line 
from  Wheeling  to  Cincinnati  as  the  western  connection 


128  NOTES    BY    A    STUDENT, 

of  the  Baltimore  and  Ohio  Railway.  Two  boats  left  Cin- 
cinnati every  day,  and  there  was  a  shore  mark,  a  pole 
with  a  pair  of  buck  horns  on  the  top,  that  was  set  up 
at  the  end  of  a  twenty-four  hours'  run.  Any  boat  that 
could  pass  the  mark  in  twenty-four  hours  moved  the 
pole  ahead  to  her  mark,  and  this  was  kept  up  until  it 
got  up  to  Parker  sburg,  Va.2  at  the  mouth  of  the  Little 
Kanahwa  River,  or  somewhere  above  there  as  I  remem- 
ber, and  it  would  have  been  shoved  up  the  river  farther 
if  steamboating  had  not  fallen  into  collapse  by  railway 
extension. 

"Railways  did  not  carry  cheaper,  but  faster,  and  with 
the  advantage  of  going  all  the  time,  besides  could  man- 
age Congress  and  secure  the  passage  of  all  kinds  of 
laws  to  harass  steamboats,  until  one  hardly  dares  to 
show  its  head  in  these  times. 

"Under  the  plea  of  taking  care  of  passengers,  the 
pilots,  engineers,  captains  and  mates  must  be  licensed 
periodically,  the  boilers  and  hulls  must  be  examined, 
the  equipment  is  prescribed  and  every  kind  of  paternal 
care  exercised,  but  when  the  same  passengers  travel  by 
rail,  the  Government  turns  them  over  to  the  mercies  of 
the  line,  which  may  use  dangerous  machinery,  ram- 
shackle carriages,  put  incompetent  people  in  charge  and 
kill  three  thousand  passengers  and  more  thousands  of 
their  own  men  each  year  without  let  or  hindrance." 

—At  St.  Louis  we  spent  a  day  or  two  in 
looking  around,  and  found  the  usual  characteristics  of 
all  large  American  cities,  evidence  of  its  being  built 
by  "pressure  from  the  outside,"  and  to  accommodate 
commerce. 

In  the  old  world  cities  were  built  first  as  the  founda- 
tion, then  their  influence  spread  as  from  a  generating 


NOTES    BY    A    STUDENT.  129 

center.  The  wealth,  learning  and  skill  flowed  from  the 
cities  outward.  In  this  manner  the  cities  were  tolerably 
well  completed  and  put  into  comfortable  order  first,  the 
country  following.  Here  it  is  the  opposite.  A  rich 
country  around,  presses  on  the  cities  which  are  built  in 
half  baked  form,  without  the  sanitary  appliances,  im- 
provements or  municipal  order,  that  the  Romans  knew 
two  thousand  years  ago. 

Building  a  city  is  no  small  matter,  it  calls  for  the  sum 
of  all  knowledge  that  exists  and  something  more,  but 
even  this  is  less  difficult  than  to  govern  one,  or  so  it 
seems  in  these  times. 

St.  Louis  is  fast  taking  on  the  attributes  of  a  city, 
and  aside  from  coal  grime,  bad  odors  and  a  tendency  to 
crawl  out  all  over  the  country,  is  quite  even  with  her 
colleagues.  The  high  price  of  ground,  and  the  specu- 
lator in  "additions,"  are  the  obstacles  that  beset  a  city 
set  on  a  plain.  Land  values  are  evaded  by  "moving 
out,"  and  the  facilities  for  travel  permit  this,  so  the 
municipal  resources  when  spread  out  over  miles  after 
miles  of  border  area,  are  not  enough  to  pave,  sewer  and 
light  the  streets.  If  one  wants  to  build  a  good  city,  a 
wall  should  be  built  around  it  first  thing,  or  it  should 
be  put  on  an  island  or  in  a  basin  surrounded  by  hills, 
so  it  cannot  "slop  over,"  and  flow  out  into  the  country. 

This  idea  came  first  from  my  uncle,  but  I  have  for 
some  years  past  made  it  a  measure  of  constant  obser- 
vations, and  find  the  truth  of  it  in  all  cases,  and  don't 
think  we  will  ever  have  a  model  city,  until  the  land  on 
which  it  stands  belongs  to  the  city  itself.  How  far  this 
system  should  extend  I  will  not  attempt  to  say,  but 
every  circumstance  points  to  it  being  the  only  way  of 


130  NOTES    BY    A    STUDENT. 

building  and  maintaining  in  an  equitable  and  successful 
way,  what  we  call  cities. 

—I  was  impatient  to  hear  the  story  of  the 
Cincinnati  pump  inventor,  and  so  reminded  my  uncle 
of  his  promise  one  evening  at  the  hotel. 

"The  circumstances,"  said  he,  "are  typical  of  some 
others,  that  will  or  may  find  their  way  into  that  note- 
book of  yours. 

"This  Wilson  was  a  kind  of  plodder,  a  cranky  kind 
of  fellow,  who  reasoned  originally  about  things,  and 
somehow  stumbled  upon  the  idea  of  amplifying  the  main 
steam  valve  of  a  pump  into  a  piston,  and  then  controll- 
ing its  movements  by  a  second  valve  moved  by  another 
piston.  The  same  idea  was  extended  in  what  are  called 
duplex  pumps,  indeed  these  are  the  same  thing,  only  the 
main  valves  and  their  pistons  not  only  distribute  steam 
to  another  piston,  but  also  operate  a  second  pump. 

' '  The  matter  lies  here ;  no  steam  piston  can  move 
directly  the  valves  that  supply  it  steam,  some  other 
force  must  be  called  in,  sometimes  a  spring,  sometimes 
a  weight  that  goes  on  and  completes  the  valve  movement, 
but  best  of  all  a  little  leading  valve  that  distributes 
steam  to  a  second  steam  piston  which  moves  the  main 
valve.  I  explain  these  matters  to  show  what  Wilson 
discovered  or  invented. 

"Later  on,  about  1872,  the  various  makers  of  direct 
acting  steam  pumps  in  this  country  formed  a  combina- 
tion, one  of  the  first  of  the  kind,  to  keep  up  prices. 
They  put  up  a  fund  for  litigation,  retained  the  most 
famous  patent  lawyers,  and  set  out  to  manage  matters 
their  own  way. 

"Out  in  Cincinnati  there  was  a  small  firm,  with  small 
capital  in  money,  but  a  tolerably  large  asset  of  skill 


NOTES    BY    A    STUDENT.  131 

and  wit,  who  were  making  such  pumps.  The  combina- 
tion scarce  regarded  this  firm,  and  intended  to  crush 
them  with  some  sham  lawsuits  when  the  time  came. 

"There  was  a  convention  of  the  pump  combination 
at  New  York,  and  the  senior  member  of  the  Cincinnati 
firm,  who  was  not  only  then,  but  is  yet  one  of  the  ablest 
hydraulic  engineers  in  this  country,  packed  up  an  old 
carpet  bag  full  of  papers,  references,  drawings  and  other 
ancient  lumber  relating  to  pump  making  in  Cincinnati, 
and  went  to  the  convention.  Of  course  he  was  not  ad- 
mitted, but  on  the  last  day,  under  an  application  for 
membership,  which  was  assessed  at  several  thousand 
dollars,  he  secured  the  right  of  being  heard. 

"He  was  a  man  of  commanding  appearance,  given  to 
laconic  expressions,  and  the  superior  of  any  and  all  of 
the  members  in  general  education  as  well  as  on  the  sub- 
ject of  pumps.  He  quietly  informed  the  convention 
that  he  was  quite  willing  to  pay  the  fee  or  assessment, 
as  soon  as  he  could  see  some  equivalent  that  could  be 
set  up  for  his  cash,  but  as  the  patents  on  which  the 
combination  was  based  were  dubious,  in  fact  invalid, 
he  thought  the  sum  of  admission  too  high.  This  of 
course  kicked  up  a  commotion,  and  on  being  asked  for 
his  authority,  the  mild  man  from  Cincinnati  began  to 
turn  out  the  contents  of  his  carpet  bag  on  a  table,  and 
in  a  few  minutes  was  admitted  free  of  all  dues,  and 
appointed  chairman  of  the  'committee  on  patents.' 

"I  have  left  out  a  good  deal,  no  doubt,  remembering 
only  the  main  circumstances,  but  it  shows  a  wonderful 
phase  of  mechanic  art  in  and  about  Cincinnati  these 
times.  Nor  was  this  all,  medical  doctors  there  were 
famous,  the  wine  industry  began  there;  learning  of 
one  kind  or  another  flourished.  The  North  and  South 


132  NOTES    BY    A    STUDENT. 

met  there^  but  the  city  was  hemmed  in  all  around  by 
hills.  It  got  hot  in  June  and  never  cooled  off  until 
October.  The  water  was  execrable,  and  mosquitos  de- 
voured one  in  the  summer,  but  the  city  has  nourished, 
and  is  one  of  the  best  governed  in  America.  They  once 
voted  three  millions  of  dollars  in  a  lump  to  pave  the 
streets,  and  at  another  time  built  a  railway  to  New 
Orleans,  the  Cincinnati  Southern,  that  has  a  bridge, 
twenty-two  miles  long,  over  Pontchartrain,  which  we 
may  see  later  on." 


CHAPTER   XX. 

A  MONOLOGUE  ON  THE  MISSISSIPPI HOW  A  RIVER  OPERATES 

—WHAT  A  MILLION   IS WHAT   ONE   GAINS  BY  OBSERV- 
ING  A  HOMILY  ON  HUMAN  EFFORT. 


—The  Mississippi  flowed  before  us  here  in 
St.  Louis.  I  had  seen  it  before,  but  it  looked  dwarfed 
now,  and  crawled  beneath  the  great  steel  bridge  in  a 
sullen,  sleepy  kind  of  way.  I  knew  very  little  about 
the  river,  except  the  schoolboy  lore,  which  is  as  near 
nothing  as  one  can  imagine,  but  I  soon  learned  more. 

My  uncle  had  fallen  in  with  some  old  friends,  none 
of  them  steamboat  men  now,  but  captains  nearly  all. 
Some  were  merchants,  some  traders,  and  some  nothing 
but  owners  of  a  lively  recollection,  tempered  as  one 
might  infer  with  a  strong  flavor  of  imagination. 

We  were  assembled  on  the  hotel  veranda,  and  after  a 
pause,  an  old  Captain  Somebody,  said  to  my  uncle: 
"Camshaft,  you  were  always  eyes  all  over,  saw  every- 
thing, pried  into  everything,  comparing,  figuring,  read- 
ing and  remembering,  now  just  tell  us  how  the  old 


NOTES    BY    A    STUDENT.  133 

river  compares  with  other  rivers  you  have  seen.  I  know 
it  is  a  good  many  years  since  you  took  to  salt  water,  as 
I  always  knew  you  would  sometime,  but  you  remem- 
ber the  river." 

This  was  just  what  I  was  waiting  for.  The  subject 
was  a  congenial  one  for  my  uncle,  and  I  got  out  my 
note-book  at  once.  Here  are  the  notes: 

"The  Mississippi  River  is  four  thousand  miles  long, 
counting  the  Missouri,  which  should  be  called  the 
Mississippi.  It  is  the  main  stem  as  to  length,  but  right 
here  let  me  say  the  length  of  river  has  nothing  to  do 
with  its  size.  Most  people  imagine  that  the  water  from 
the  little  lake  at  the  head  finds  its  way  to  the  gulf.  It 
is  no  such  thing.  If  there  was  not  a  continual  accre- 
tion of  water  all  along  the  way?  the  river  would  run  out 
and  dry  up  long  before  it  reaches  New  Orleans,  or  here 
even,  like  some  rivers  do  half  way  up  from  their  mouths. 
Here,  Tech !  do  some  figuring  for  me. 

"Take  a  thousand  miles  of  this  river  from  here  to 
Natchez  a  mile  wide,  and  see  how  many  square  miles 
that  will  make.  One  thousand.  Of  course  it  would. 
Now  tell  me  how  much  water  it  would  take  to  cover  a 
square  mile  one-fourth  of  an  inch  deep.  One  square 
mile— 640  acres— 27,878,400  square  feet— divided  by  48 
to  find  the  volume  of  the  %  inch  in  cubic  feet,  gives 
580,800,  multiplied  by  1,000  gives  580,800,000  cubic  feet. 

"Might  just  as  well  be  half  as  much  or  twice  as 
much,"  said  my  uncle.  "The  figures  convey  no  figure 
or  conception  to  the  mind,  but  this  is  the  amount  of 
water  that  will  evaporate  in  one  hot  day  all  over  the 
river  between  here  and  Natchez,  and  if  there  was  no 
accretion  of  water,  the  river  would  not  reach  there,  but 
all  be  dried  up  on  the  way.  There  are  more  than  fifty 


134  NOTES    BY    A    STUDENT. 

rivers  large  enough  to  steamboat  in,  that  empty  intx- 
this  great  drainway.  The  water  here  is  not  what  enters 
the  gulf  at  all. 

"The  river  down  at  Cairo  is  a  mile  wide,  and  averages 
about  90  feet  of  depth  from  there  to  New  Orleans.  It. 
is  the  largest  river  in  the  world  by  volume  and  length, 
the  volume  is  made  up  by  a  velocity  of  four  miles  an 
hour.  A  river  may  be  five  miles  wide  and  have  half 
the  volume  of  flow.  The  Amazon  toward  its  mouth  is 
an  example.  But  not  in  water  alone  is  this  river  ahead. 
It  carries  more  mud  than  all  the  rest  combined.  This 
I  suppose  you  know  from  the  mixture  you  have  been 
drinking.  Some  one  curious  in  such  matters  computes 
that  six  millions  tons  of  earth  is  carried  down  annually. 
He  might  just  as  well  have  said  sixty  millions.  As  I 
said  before,  one  cannot  conceive  of  such  a  quantity,  it- 
should  be  expresed  in  mountains,  farms,  or  square  miles 
of  territory. 

"This  mud  comes  out  of  the  Missouri  River,  nearly 
all  of  it.  The  mouth  is  just  above  here,  and  Avill  be 
here  soon,  at  the  rate  it  is  moving  down  stream.  The 
Missouri,  contrary  to  all  rules  for  river  construction, 
is  a  rapid  stream  in  an  alluvial  bed  that  shifts  about 
so  much  that  it  keeps  on  top,  which  is  a  fortunate  mat- 
ter, otherwise  it  would  cut  a  channel  half  a  mile  deep, 
and  spoil  all  the  cornfields  along  the  route. 

"The  Mississippi  Valley  means  all  between  the  Alle- 
ghany  and  the  Rocky  mountain  ranges,  as  we  commonly 
say.  It  means  about  three-fourths  of  this  country,  and 
nearly  as  much  in  area  as  all  the  principal  countries  of 
Europe,  Russia  excepted. 

"The  sinuosity  is  unaccountable,  for  no  one  can  ex- 
plain why  a  river  should  go  meandering  around  right 


NOTES    BY    A    STUDENT.  135 


and  left,  making  up  in  a  thousand  miles  from  here  five 
hundred  of  lost  distance.  Fifty  per  cent  is  deviation. 
What  this  is  for,  what  the  cause  and  wherefore,  no  one 
knows,  unless  it  is  to  prevent  the  whole  valley  from 
being  sawed  in  two  pieces,  as  would  soon  occur  if  the 
river  was  straight. 

"As  it  is,  there  is  a  continual  turmoil  for  thousands 
of  miles,  especially  on  the  Missouri  branch.  People  and 
towns  are  shifted  from  one  State  to  another,  and  people 
on  the  banks  and  islands  don't  know  where  to  vote  or 
pay  their  taxes.  Islands  come  and  go.  The  channel  is 
first  one  place  and  then  another.  In  my  time  you  could 
always  detect  a  Missouri  River  pilot,  by  the  nature  and 
vigor  of  his  profanity.  It  was  a  distilled  essence  one 
might  say,  and  it  is  just  the  same  now,  I  mean  the  river, 
only  freights  are  so  low  that  a  man  cannot  afford  a  new 
steamboat  every  fourth  trip  or  so,  the  traffic  has  nearly 
ended,  has  also  become  dangerous  in  proportion,  because 
boats  have  to  pass  pretty  often  to  know  where  the  chan- 
nel is. 

"Sometimes,  or  quite  often  indeed,  the  whole  river 
scatters  over  the  country,  like  the  Skargord  in  Sweden ; 
scatters  so  there  is  no  telling  if  it  all  finds  the  way 
back.  It  does  not  indeed,  and  here  comes  another  idea 
about  rivers,  an  idea  that  shows  how  we  act  and  think 
on  impressions  instead  of  facts.  Saturate  a  sponge  and 
lay  it  down,  a  small  trickle  of  water  will  run  off,  but  the 
main  body  remains  in  the  sponge.  Fill  up  the  sponge 
once  an  hour,  and  you  have  a  figure  of  the  basin  of  a 
river.  The  bed  is  filled  up  once  a  year,  and  the  water 
passing  here  is  a  mere  trickle  compared  to  the  whole 
volume,  the  surface  water,  so  to  speak.  Dry  out  the  bed 


136  NOTES    BY    A    STUDENT. 

of  this  river,  and  it  is  not  likely  that  a  drop  of  water 
would  run  here  for  ten  years  to  come. 

"The  Mississippi,  as  I  said,  is  a  mile  wide  from  Cairo 
to  Vicksburg,  then  grows  narrower,  and  from  New  Or- 
leans to  the  Belize  is  only  half  a  mile  wide,  but  a  little 
deeper,  not  deep  enough  however  to  represent  the  con- 
tinued accretion  of  water  on  the  way.  The  subterranean 
feature  of  rivers  is  the  most  wonderful  part.  The  rise 
and  fall  here  and  for  a  long  way  down  is  about  fifty 
feet,  then  less  and  less:  and  only  one-fourth  as  much 
at  New  Orleans,  nine  feet  some  will  tell,  but  it  is  more — 
fourteen,  perhaps.  It  has  spilled  out,  gone  up  into  the 
air,  over  and  through  the  banks  and  levees,  a  good  deal 
down  the  bayous,  such  as  La  Fourche  and  Plaquemine 
two  hundred  miles  from  the  real  mouth,  but  are  mouths 
themselves  in  a  sense. 

"It  is  a  queer  river,  a  wild  raging  river  with  a  water 
shed  three  thousand  miles  one  way  and  two  thousand 
the  other,  which  multiplied  together  give  six  millions, 
in  so  far  as  giving  one  an  idea  of  quantity  or  dimen- 
sions. A  million  is  a  nonentity,  no  one  comprehends 
it,  that  is,  it  conveys  no  tangible  idea  of  capacity  or 
dimensions,  it  is  only  a  figure  to  be  split  up  into  smaller 
factors,  but  this  Mississippi  Valley  too  is  nearly  in  the 
same  category. 

— This  was  the  longest  continued  lecture 
1  had  ever  heard  from  my  uncle,  or  secured  for  my 
notes,  and  was  of  much  interest  to  the  company.  It 
also  led  up  to  a  new  idea  or  observed  fact  on  my  part, 
namely:  mankind  are  unconsciously  divided  into  those 
who  deal  with  reason  over  what  is  seen,  and  those  who 
go  on  inductively  to  deal  with  and  reason  over  what  is 
not  seen,  but  implied.  To  some,  nature  is  a  book  full 


NOTES    BY    A    STUDENT.  137 

of  iiidden  meanings  and  signs  that  to  others  are  only 
visible  facts. 

A  chemist,  for  example,  in  looking  at  substances,  sees 
theiu  as  a  combination  of  elements  or  gases.  He  is  like 
8  person  traveling  in  a  land  where  his  own  language  is 
used.  He  reads  the  signs,  the  newspapers,  hears  all 
that  is  said,  and  understands  it,  but  shift  him  to  an- 
other land  with  a  strange  language,  where  his  eyes, 
ears  and  tongue  are  of  little  use,  and  he  is  in  the  posi- 
tion of  one  without  scientific  knowledge. 

He  sees  rivers  flow,  movement  all  around,  but  does  not 
know  what  causes  it,  he  sees  rain  fall,  but  does  not 
know  from  whence  it  came  or  whither  it  goes.  Plant 
life,  animal  life  and  physical  laws,  are  all  hidden  be- 
hind an  inscrutable  veil,  and  he  goes  on  groping  in 
the  dark,  and  is  happy?  so  long  as  he  does  not  know  there 
is  more  to  be  understood. 

Then  again  comes  the  question,  what  does  a  person 
gain  by  this  faculty  or  qualification  of  understanding 
things?  Answer — nothing.  It  is  only  others  that  gain. 
Education  constitutes  a  man  a  martyr,  opening  to  his 
eyes  wide  fields  of  effort  and  labor,  solely  for  others, 
his  little  part  being  only  the  exercise  of  faculties  that 
physically  he  would  be  better  without. 

Many  a  time  have  I  thought  how  this  prying,  inves- 
tigating faculty  of  my  uncle  had  brought  him  a  life  of 
toil  and  labor,  the  fruits  of  which  were  scattered  over 
a  wide  field,  beside  the  little  scraps  that  fell  to  my  lot, 
and  to  these  notes.  Suppose  instead  that  he  had  con- 
fined his  time,  thoughts  and  energies  to  making  shoes, 
all  alike,  year  in  and  year  out,  eating  his  poor  bread  in 
comfort,  and  never  looked  outride  a  little  shop,  or 
reached  beyond  his  cobbler's  bench,  run  the  long  race 


138  NOTES    BY    A    STUDENT. 

happily?  honestly,  and  at  the  end  without  enemies,  laid 
down  in  peace,  his  corporal  part  to  be  resolved  into 
gases,  the  existence  of  which  he  possessed  no  knowledge 
or  hint,  and  his  spirit  to  that  goal  where  the  best  of  us 
tend;  would  not  this  have  been  a  more  happy  life? 
Quien  sabe? 


CHAPTER    XXI. 

AN   INDIAN    MASSACRE A    QUEER   WATER-CRAFT AN   ESSAY 


Some  time,  perhaps  not  long  hence, 

there  will  be  classic  ground,  about  the  Falls  of  St.  An- 
thony, in  this  upper  river  country.  Indian  stories  and 
traditions  are  as  thick  as  legends  on  the  Rhine,  most 
of  them  nearly  as  absurd,  and  all  of  them,  I  mean  as 
a  lot,  are  equally  true.  One,  however,  is  true.  That 
of  the  Winona  massacre  in  1861,  when  the  Sioux  Nation 
was  called  down  from  the  North  to  be  paid  their  annual 
stipend,  and  failing  to  get  the  money  set  to  work  and 
murdered  a  large  number  of  people  in  Winona  Valley. 

The  circumstances  were  so  overshadowed  by  the  great 
events  of  the  Civil  War,  then  transpiring,  that  people 
have  forgotten  this,  one  of  the  greatest  Indian  massacres 
that  ever  took  place  on  the  continent.  An  old  resident 
of  the  country,  we  happened  to  meet,  thus  told  the 
story,  which  I  have  set  down  in  his  own  words  as  nearly 
as  possible. 

"Ingens  are  bad,  no  doubt,  especially  Sioux,  that  is, 
they  are  not  afraid,  and  sullen,  cruel  scamps,  but  Ingen 
agents  is  worse.  The  money  was  sent  out  here  from 
Washington  for  the  Ingens,  and  they  were  asked  to 


NOTES    BY    A    STUDENT.  139 

come  down  here  to  Winona  to  be  paid.  By  the  time 
pay  day  comes  around  these  fellows  had  no  ammunition, 
no  blankets,  nothing  to  eat,  and  were  just  like  a  lot  of 
half-starved  cattle  running  to  water  and  feed.  Several 
thousand  came  to  Winona,  Sioux,  Chippewas  and  others. 
The  money  got  here  in  time,  all  in  coin,  but  the  cussed 
agents  discovered  that  by  sending  it  back  to  St.  Louis 
and  exchanging  it  for  paper  bills  they  could  pay  the 
Ingens  and  pocket  the  premium,  which  all  at  once 
had  jumped  up  to  twenty-five  per  cent  or  more. 

"Now,  just  think  of  it.  Here  was  a  wild,  starving 
crowd  of  savages,  without  anything  to  eat,  and  no 
shelter;  squaws,  children^  old  and  young  devils  of  all 
kinds,  starving  crazy,  and  believing  that  the  Govern- 
ment had  fooled  them,  and  enticed  them  down  here  to 
die.  I  don't  want  to  excuse  Ingens,  but  just  think  of  it. 
They  kept  getting  wilder  and  hungrier,  until  at  last 
out  came  the  knives,  hatchets  and  clubs,  and  the  set- 
tlers were  killed  right  and  left.  It  was  terrible.  The 
soldiers  soon  settled  the  matter,  and,  as  you  know,  thir- 
ty-five of  the  wretches  were  hung,  all  in  a  row,  like 
blackbirds  on  a  limb,  and  the  pity  was  that  an  Ingen 
agent  was  not  strung  up  between  each  pair  of  Ingens." 

This  matter  I  must  leave  to  history,  and  also  would 
willingly  omit  some  remarks  on  "Ingens"  by  my  uncle, 
that  followed,  but  candor  demands  its  inclusion  now 
that  the  subject  is  open. 

"The  Indians  of  North  America,"  said  he,  "are  a 
strange  race  of  wonderful  diversity,  but  all  with  strong 
passions  and  a  kind  of  rude  manhood  that  is  not  com- 
mon among  other  savages.  They  do  not  like  to  be  lied 
to,  and  once  they  are  deceived  that  ends  their  con- 
fidence forever.  They  look  with  distrust  on  white  men, 


140  NOTES    BY    A    STUDENT. 

and  with  good  cause.  We  always  manage  to  send  our 
worst  men  to  come  in  contact  with  the  Indians,  I  mean 
in  a  civil  capacity.  An  'Indian  agent'  is  a  synonym 
with  Jeremy  Diddler,  with  cruelty  thrown  in,  and  the 
treatment  of  the  Indian  tribes  must  pass  down  in  history 
alongside  of  negro  slavery  in  this  land  of  the  free  and 
home  of  the  brave,  or  as  a  common  rendering  of  it  some 
years  ago,  which  substituted  'slave'  for  'brave.' 

"Old  William  Penn  had  no  trouble  with  Indians, 
neither  had  the  British  Government,  nor  has  the  Cana- 
dian Government.  Go  a  hundred  miles  from  here, 
across  the  line  into  Canada,  and  you  will  find  there  is 
no  trouble  with  Indians,  not  the  least,  never  has  been, 
and  never  will  be  so  long  as  they  are  treated  in  good 
faith.  This  is  easy  to  understand.  Savages,  or,  to  use 
a  better  name,  uneducated  people,  have  certain  traits 
just  as  strongly  developed  as  what  we  call  civilized 
people.  They  have  confidence,  respect  and  resentment, 
and  passion,  just  the  same,  but  are  wanting  in  penetra- 
tion., or  the  faculty  of  divining  the  intentions  and 
schemes  of  men  skilled  in  arts  mysterious  to  them,  so 
they  are  always  ready  to  believe  and  exaggerate  what- 
ever savors  of  deceit.  The  difficulty  with  our  people, 
and  all  others  who  call  themselves  civilized,  is  that 
they  want  to  thrust  on  other  people  their  customs, 
religion,  whiskey,  guns,  penitentiaries  and  general  ras- 
cality. 

"I  have  been  among  Indians  a  good  deal,  not  here  in 
this  country,  but  among  real  Indians,  natives  of  India, 
where  there  is  no  whiskey,  no  stealing,  and,  I  believe, 
more  religion  than  I  have  yet  found  among  white  men. 
I  am  not  speaking  of  Mohammedan  India,  or  Bhuddistic 
India,  but  the  whole  of  it,  or  so  much  as  is  reached  by 


NOTES    BY    A    STUDENT.  141 

the  common  lines  of  travel.  These  natives  here  should 
not  be  called  Indians  any  more  than  Italians  or  Rus- 
sians. They  have  nothing  to  do  with  Indian,  more- 
over are  not  like  Indians,  except  as  to  color,  that  means 
the  same  in  men  as  it  does  in  horses. ' ' 

—We  finally  got  started  on  a  steamer,  to 
me  a  queer  kind  of  craft  that  seemed  to  require  some  bale 
ropes  and  shores  to  hold  it  together.  It  was  an  ex- 
ample of  attenuated  cheapness,  that  cost  per  ton,  or 
square  yard,  about  as  much,  perhaps  less,  than  would 
have  built  a  house  of  like  size  on  the  land,  still  it  was, 
except  as  to  flimsiness,  comfortable,  convenient  and 
steamed  at  a  fair  speed.  The  most  annoying  thing  was 
the  vibration.  One  could  not  read  in  the  vicinity  of 
the  wheels,  and  everything  loose  seemed  to  be  crawling 
about  with  the  jar,  but  the  scheme,  so  to  call  it,  is  in- 
genious withal.  There  is  more  steamboat  for  the 
money  than  any  one  would  suppose  possible,  and  that 
where  money  is  by  no  means  cheap  or  plenty.  Alleg- 
heny pine,  the  white,  soft,  aromatic  fir  of  that  name, 
but  mostly  coming  from  the  northwest,  is  used  for  al- 
most every  purpose.  The  whole  upper  works  are  of 
pine  and  pajnt,  the  latter  tasteful  and  laid  on  thick,  a 
fearfully  combustible  arrangement,  which  the  chief 
engineer  told  me  would  burn  up  totally  in  five  minutes. 
Strangers  who  come  here  are  always  on  the  lookout 
for  boiler  explosions,  myself  among  the  number,  and 
apprehension  was  increased  by  a  grizzly  old  native  in 
the  hotel  at  St.  Paul,  who  volunteered  some  history  in 
the  matter  that  was  not  of  an  assuring  kind,  and  here 
let  me  say  that  even  positive  knowledge  does  not  always 
protect  the  human  mind  from  the  influence  of  error. 
I  know  as  well  as  a  person  can  well  learn  when  a  boiler 


142  NOTES   BY    A    STUDENT. 

will  explode,  or  the  circumstances  under  which  it  will 
"come  away,"  to  use  a  sailor's  expression,  but  here  I 
find  myself  influenced  by  the  twaddle  of  an  ignorant 
old  fellow?  who  could  not  distinguish  between  a  steam 
boiler  and  a  saw  log  if  the  two  were  side  by  side. 

"Bilers,"  said  he,  "don't  explode  now  as  much  as 
they  used  to.  There  ain't  so  many  of  them,  for  one 
thing,  and  the  men  are  too  lazy  nowadays  to  fire  them, 
but  we  don't  know  any  more  about  it  now  than  we  did 
fifty  years  ago,  when  the  Red  Wing  went  up,  nor  when 
the  Moselle  went  up  sixty  years  ago  at  Cincinnati,  and 
left  nothing  but  a  hole  in  the  water.  The  trouble  is 
there  are  so  many  causes  people  can't  find  them  out. 
The  polarity  of  the  water  is  one  cause?  crystallization 
is  another  cause,  and  decomposition  of  the  water  also, 
besides  the  bottom  gets  covered  with  mud  and  blows 
out.  Some  folks  say  it  is  too  much  pressure ;  well,, 
there  must  be  pressure  around  or  else  there  would  be 
no  force,  but  steam  pressure  alone  don't  act  like  gun- 
powder, and  hoist  a  whole  steamboat  into  the  air  a 
thousand  feet  high.  There  is  something  more,  and  you 
can't  get  a  steamboat  man  to  subscribe  to  such  a  theory. 
It  won't  do,  it  ain't  reason,  a  biler  must  have  a  weak 
spot.  Why  don't  that  go  first,  and  when  it  does  go  a 
square  foot  of  hole  would  let  all  the  steam  out  in  a  wink 
or  half  a  wink?  You  may  talk  about  ingines  and  ma- 
chinery, and  all  that,  and  I  am  bound  to  believe  what 
you  say,  but  on  biler  explosions  your  theory  won't 
work." 

I  do  not  want  to  bring  discredit  on  the  venerable 
faculty  of  my  alma  mater,  but  there  was  one  thing,  and 
only  one  in  the  crude  lecture  above  recited,  that  shook 
my  confidence,  and  that  was  the  weak  point  in  a 


NOTES    BY    A~^TtfDENT  143 


"biler,"  and  why  a  rupture  did  not  end  there  as  soon 
as  "vent"  was  gained,  unless  relief  of  pressure  per- 
mitted all  of  the  water  to  flash  into  steam. 

—I  went  down  on  the  lower  deck,  about 
two  feet  above  the  water  line,  and  examined  the  en- 
gines. They  were  set  on  solid  keelsons  of  timber,  in- 
clined about  ten  degrees  to  the  crank  shaft,  puppet 
lever  valves,  wooden  connecting  rod,  and  between  them 
a  "doctor,"  who  did  the  pumping  for  the  vessel  in- 
dependent of  the  main  engines.  How  this  latter-named 
implement  got  its  name  the  annals  of  the  river  do  not 
explain,  but  it  is  a  "doctor"  everywhere.  The  word 
"auxiliary"  had  not  found  its  way  out  West  when 
these  doctors  were  invented,  but  name  aside  I  must  set 
them  down  as  the  most  complete  thing  of  the  kind  I  had 
ever  seen.  This  view,  however,  as  it  must  be  here  writ- 
ten, is  not  wholly  my  own,  because  I  consulted  my 
uncle  on  this  doctor  problem,  and  found  as  usual  he 
had,  at  some  time  long  past,  put  the  subject  through 
his  crucible  of  analysis  in  the  usual  manner. 

"These  Mississippi  steamboat  doctors,"  said  he, 
"represent  the  finest  mechanical  combination  in  the 
whole  range  of  steam  machinery.  They  are  essentially 
a  plain  beam  engine  with  a  row  of  pumps  on  each  side 
of  the  beam.  The  fulcrum  frame  is  composed  of  hol- 
low columns,  the  best  form  possible,  performing  also 
the  function  of  pipes.  Tl^ere  are  supply  pumps,  I 
never  say  feed  pumps  since  the  Frenchmen  have  trans- 
lated the  name  as  pomp  alimcntairc,  or  "food  pump;" 
there  are  bilge  pumps  and  others,  as  many  as  are  re- 
quired. Everything  is  on  end,  consequently  con- 
densed into  the  smallest  space  possible,  the  strains  are 
nearly  direct  on  all  connections,  and  there  is  one  fea- 


144  NOTES    BY    A    STUDENT. 

ture  you  may  have  overlooked,  the  action  of  the  fly- 
wheel. 

"On  all  land  pumps  having  a  flywheel  the  idea  is  to 
produce  uniform  rotation  or  speed.  Of  course  the 
primary  object  or  function  is  to  regulate  the  stroke,  and 
obtain  proper  valve  motion,  but,  as  said,  the  'idea'  is  to 
secure  tolerably  uniform  speed  of  rotation.  In  a  doctor 
this  is  not  looked  for.  There  is  not  much  room  for  a 
flywheel,  and  not  much  for  it  to  do.  It  carries  over 
the  centers,  of  course,  but  the  idea  is  to  permit  the 
steam  piston  to  act  directly  on  the  water  pistons,  or  as 
much  so  as  possible,  and  this  produces  very  irregular 
motion.  In  effect  it  is  a  direct-acting  steam  pump  with 
a  regulated  stroke,  and  a  plain  slide  distributing  valve 
for  the  steam. 

"These  doctors  are  reliable  in  every  way.  They 
stand  in  open  view  between  the  engines,  and  the  least 
derangement  of  the  pumps  is  at  once  detected  by  the 
symptoms.  They  have  more  science  in  them  than  the 
whole  auxiliary  pumping  outfit  for  a  man-of-war.  By 
science  I  mean  common  sense,  the  two  terms  being  in  a 
way  convertible.  The  doctor  goes  on  forever;  I  never 
knew  one  to  fail.  Everything  about  the  pumps  is  in 
duplicate,  for  the  double  purpose  of  balancing  forces 
and  furnishing  a  relay  in  case  of  accident.  You  may 
find  all  the  fault  you  will  with  the  wooden  engines, 
sheet-iron  furnaces,  and  slam-bang  valve  gear,  but  be 
careful  what  you  set  down  in  disparagement  of  the 
'doctor.'  When  I  build  a  steamship  or  erect  a  large 
steam  power  on  land,  both  of  which  events  are  alike 
improbable,  I  will  first  thing  buy  a  steamboat  'doctor,' 
and  then  build  the  rest  around  it.  It  is  fifty  years  old, 
without  blemish  in  its  reputation,  and  has  never  been 


NOTES    BY    A    STUDENT.  145 

improved  so  far  as  I  know.  The  first  doctor  was  like 
the  last  one.  The  castiron  eagles  on  the  beam  and  the 
vermilion  paint  have  gone  out,  but  the  main  features 
are  all  there,  and  will  stay  there." 


CHAPTER   XXII. 

A    SAINTLY    CITY SIX    MILES    OF    STEAMBOATS A    FALLEN 

CITY CHARLES    MACKAY    ON    THE    CRESCENT    CITY A 

TOP     DRAINAGE     SYSTEM A     PAVEMENT     FOR     200 

YEARS CARPET   BAGGERS RIVER   PIRATES A 

BRIDGE  22  MILES  LONG — ON  FLAT  BOATS. 

— St.  Louis,  now  a  great  city,  founded  in 


1746,  nearly  150  years  ago,  named,  it  is  said,  after 
Louis  XV,  who  was  no  saint,  indeed  was  quite  the  oppo- 
site of  a  well-regulated  saint,  and  considering  its  en- 
vironment, is  a  small  city.  It  was  transferred  to  the 
United  States  in  1804  from  its  French  owners,  and 
should  now  be  the  main  city  of  the  United  States,  and 
would  be  if  there  had  been  no  railways,  but  these  con- 
verted it  to  a  way  station.  In  1852  there  were  100,000 
people  here,  now  450,000  (1895). 

The  old  steamboat  levee  in  1860  was  six  miles  long, 
and  as  many  as  one  hundred  and  seventy  steamboats 
have  been  counted  there  at  one  time.  This  seems  an 
enormous  number,  but  when  one  begins  to  count  up 
water  courses  the  wonder  is  there  were  not  more  steam- 
boats. Let  us  count  up  this  mileage,  or  the  main  part 
of  it.  The  Missouri  River,  2,000  miles;  Mississippi, 
upward,  750  miles;  Mississippi,  downward,  1,300  miles; 
the  Ohio,  1,000  miles;  Red  River,  1,100  miles;  White 
River,  400  miles;  Tennessee,  300  miles;  Cumberland, 


146  NOTES    BY    A    STUDENT. 

300  miles;  Wabash,  300  miles,  in  all,  of  free  water 
course,  navigable  for  large  boats,  7?450  miles,  to  which 
can  be  added  enough  in  smaller  rivers  to  make  up  5,000 
miles  more.  Suppose  that  railways  had  not  been  in- 
vented, and  all  this  commerce  was  confined  to  river 
cities,  what  would  Cincinnati,  St.  Louis  and  New  Or- 
leans be  now? 

New  Orleans,  the  Crescent  City,  is  like  Babylon,  the 
fallen.  It  is  not  the  city  it  was  at  one  time,  and  can 
never  be  again.  Even  if  its  commerce  should  under 
modern  methods  rise  to  the  same  volume  as  thirty  years 
ago  the  place  would  in  no  sense  be  the  same.  The  city 
has  not  declined  so  much  as  the  people  have.  There 
was  always  much  crime  there,  principally  of  violence, 
but  this  has  given  way  to  quiet  rascality  taught  by  the 
circumstances  of  war,  and  principally  by  the  "carpet- 
bag" regime  and  the  Freedman's  Bureau,  by  means  of 
which  the  carpet-bag  officers  gained  their  places. 

"New  Orleans/'  said  my  uncle,  "had  to  be  here. 
There  had  to  be  a  city  at  the  end  of  this  mighty  valley, 
otherwise  no  one  not  a  double  fool  would  ever  have 
thought  of  laying  out  a  town  on  a  marsh  at  water  level. 
Why  they  cannot  bury  one  here,  the  dead  are  put  into 
mounds,  like  flowers  in  pots.  The  drainage  is  on  top 
of  the  ground,  as  you  can  see,  and  you  can  take  up  a 
paving  stone  out  there  in  the  street,  dig  down  a  foot  or 
so,  and  then  run  a  cane  fishing  pole  down  full  length. 
You  see  that  big  building  over  there  made  of  granite, 
that  is  the  custom  house,  and  has  under  it  all  sorts  of 
contrivances  to  hold  it  up,  including  some  thousands 
of  cotton  bales,  so  it  is  said.  Well,  that  building  has 
gone  down  about  nine  feet,  and  will  continue  to  go. 


NOTES    BY    A    STUDENT.  147 

'  *  The  St.  Charles  Hotel,  where  we  are  now  sitting,  has 
been  held  up  pretty  well.  It  is  an  old  house,  and  has 
rested  on  piles,  or  at  least  partly  so,  also  other  known 
devices  to  secure  flotation  in  mud. 

"There  are  queer  things  here,  many  of  them.  Out 
there  on  Canal  street  you  see  it  is  paved  with  large 
squares  of  granite.  I  suppose  you  think  they  are  flag- 
stones or  veneering.  No  such  a  thing.  These  stones  are 
equilateral  cubes,  with  six  sides  to  wear  out.  As  soon 
as  one  side  is  worn  another  can  be  turned  up,  but  you 
need  not  watch  for  that  operation.  The  side  you  see 
has  been  in  use  for  thirty-five  years,  and  is  good  yet. 
Six  times  thirty-five  is  two  hundred  and  ten  years  of 
wear,  and  that  will  pay  for  quarrying  out  granite  cubes 
in  New  Hampshire  and  carrying  them  here.  A  number 
of  other  streets  are  laid  in  the  same  way,  and  are  the 
best  paved  in  America. 

"I  suppose  you  are  wondering  where  the  drainage 
goes  to  when  the  river  is  higher  than  the  city.  It  does 
not  go  that  way.  Behind  here  is  a  chain  of  estuaries 
or  lakes,  Ponchartrain  and  Borgne,  connected  with  the 
Gulf  and  lower  than  the  river,  a  little  lower,  but  not 
much,  but  always  at  one  level.  The  sewage  is  lifted  by 
wheels  back  of  the  city,  and  thus  given  head  enough 
to  flow  back  to  Ponchartrain,  six  miles  away. 

"New  Orleans  is  not  a  river  city  altogether,  it  is  in 
effect  on  salt  water,  and  luckily  too.  If  it  were  not  the 
heat  would  kill  one  at  night,  unless  the  mosquitos  had 
performed  that  office  in  advance.  Six  miles  out  from 
here  is  what  makes  New  Orleans  endurable  in  summer. 
Fine  lakes  of  salt  water,  or  brackish  water,  clear  and 
cool,  with  all  the  comfortable  inventions  .  known  to 
modern  taste  and  contrivance,  gardens,  music,  restau- 


148  NOTES    BY    A    STUDENT. 

rants,  theaters  and  other  things,  which  a  Frenchman 
alone  could  invent  and  maintain. 

"Out  of  the  old  French  and  still  older  Spanish  ele- 
ment here,  coupled  with  the  Southern  chivalry,  which 
people  sometimes  deride,  came  to  this  city  certain  attri- 
butes of  an  advanced  civilization,  not  quite  extinct  at 
this  time,  but  greatly  impaired.  These  old  Southern 
folk  had  their  good  traits.  They  would  shoot  each 
other  sometimes,  burn  a  nigger  now  and  then,  consume 
a  large  amount  of  liquor,  and  swear  like  the  army  in 
Flanders,  but  they  would  not  'steal.'  The  carpet  bag- 
gers taught  them  that,  and  a  very  sorry  lesson  it  proved 
to  be. 

"You  perhaps  don't  know  what  this  term  "carpet 
baggers"  means.  It  indicates  a  public  officer  whose  in- 
terest in  the  country  was  carried  in  a  carpet  bag;  came 
here  to  get  an  office,  issue  public  bonds,  sell  them,  pocket 
the  money,  and  clear  out.  Go  out  about  here  to  any 
city,  and  the  trail  remains  in  the  form  of  a  bonded 
debt.  Cromwell  in  Ireland  is  the  only  parallel  I  can 
think  of.  Austin,  Houston,  Mobile,  Baton  Rouge  were 
taken  in.  Here  in  New  Orleans  there  was  veritable  war, 
cannon,  barricades,  the  United  States  Mint  turned  into 
a  fort. 

"At  the  end  of  the  great  Civil  War  the  white  people 
were  all  'tore  up,'  as  they  describe  it.  They  did  not 
vote,  in  fact  did  not  dare  to  vote.  The  negroes  were 
marched  to  the  polls,  and  a  stranger  with  a  carpet  bag 
became  a  mayor,  others  councilmen,  and  even  a  gov- 
ernor in  this  State,  but  to  sum  it  up  this  political  con- 
quest of  the  South  destroyed  or  stole  more  of  her  wealth 
than  was  lost  in  the  Civil  War.  That  is  a  strong  state- 
ment, but  is  supported  not  only  by  facts,  but  admitted 


NOTES    BY    A    STUDENT.  149 

by  any  honest  and  impartial  citizen  whose  opinion  you 
may  ask. 

"There  were  always  pirates  here,  river  thieves,  that 
carried  on  a  kind  of  Captain  Kid  business.  They  stole 
everything  from  fruit  to  fence  rails,  and  from  young 
chickens  to  horses.  There  was  little  of  the  common  law 
machinery  along  the  coast  from  Baton  Rouge  down, 
the  code  depending  mostly  on  long-range  rifles  and  re- 
volvers. The  'chicken  thieves,'  that  is,  small  thief 
boats,  prowled  around  the  river.  They  had  'dug  outs,' 
little  light  canoes,  to  go  ashore  in.  They  would  go 
under  the  wharves  here.,  and  slit  coffee  sacks  through 
the  cracks,  and  draw  down  a  canoe  full  of  green  coffee, 
paddle  out  to  the  thief  boat,  commonly  a  small  sloop, 
and  come  back  for  another  load.  The  men  were  for- 
eigners, Spanish,  Italians  and  Portuguese  mostly. 
When  a  planter  saw  one  of  these  craft  lying  off  his 
plantation  he  usually  opened  fire  on  them  with  a  rifle. 
This  was  the  only  kind  of  stealing  known  here  in  former 
days,  but  they  have  fifty  variations  of  it  now,  mostly 
within  the  pale  of  the  law,  but  no  better  for  that;  in 
fact,  worse.  A  thief  under  cover  of  the  law,  the  church, 
or  an  army,  is  the  meanest  of  all  thieves.  A  real  high- 
wayman is  a  saint  in  comparison. 

"The  Belize  is  down  a  hundred  miles  or  so  from  here. 
I  don't  know  what  the  term  means,  other  than  the 
mouths  of  the  Mississippi.  There  are  three  principal 
ones,  and  a  dozen  smaller  ones,  but  fewer  now  than 
when  Captain  Eads  built  the  mattress  walls  there, 
called  jetties.  He  concentrated  the  water,  caused  a 
scour  in  one  of  the  main  channels,  and  produced 
twenty-six  feet  of  water,  instead  of  fifteen,  or  so,  that 
existed  before.  Very  few  go  down  there,  there  is  noth- 


150  NOTES    BY    A    STUDENT. 


ing  to  go  for.  The  great  river  dies  there,  flattens  out 
like  a  jelly  fish  exposed  to  the  sun,  and  the  waters  flow 
into  the  ocean  to  begin  a  new  round  of  fog  and  clouds, 
that  are  converted  to  rain  at  the  head  waters,  four 
thousand  miles  away.  There  is  the  same  amount  of 
water  all  the  time,  but  it  shifts  around." 

—The  greatest  feature  of  this  country 
here,  and  for  two  hundred  miles  above2  also  for  an  un- 
known distance  each  way,  is  swamps.  Going  out  to 
Lake  Ponchartrain,  six  miles  L-  so  on  the  shell  road,  a 
veritable  road  made  of  shells,  the  swamps  are  on  each 
side.  What  it  means  I  cannot  make  out.  That  the  land 
and  water  should  have  arrived  at  levels  so  nearly  the 
same,  and  remain  there  for  ages,  as  the  great  trees  attest, 
is  a  strange  thing  indeed.  The  lakes,  or  at  least  Pon- 
chartrain,  are  only  a  little  lower.  Straight  across  this 
lake,  twenty-two  mileSj  the  Cincinnati  Southern  Rail- 
way has  driven  piles  and  built  a  bridge.  Think  of  a 
bridge  twenty-two  miles  long,  but  it  is  there.  Raise  the 
bed  of  this  lake  a  few  feet,  not  more  than  six,  and,  ex- 
cept a  channel  here  and  there,  it  would  be  a  "swamp," 
and  bear  huge  trees,  be  covered  with  jungle  and  reeds, 
beneath  which,  and  among  which,  would  swarm  all 
kinds  of  life  of  the  least  desirable  kind,  serpents,  mos- 
caritoes,  alligators,  snapping  turtles,  and  other  things 
of  a  creeping  and  venomous  kind. 

—I  heard  the  term  "flat  boat"  several 
times  since  coming  into  the  Mississippi  Valley,  and  had 
some  idea  of  its  meaning,  but  not  very  clearly.  Last 
evening  a  man  remarked :  * '  That  was  in  flat-boat 
times,"  indicating  an  age  when  this  species  of  acaiatic 
craft  flourished,  so  I  lost  no  time  in  asking  an  explana- 


NOTES   BY  A   STUDENT.  151 

tion  of  my  uncle,  who  was  good  enough  to  go  to  the 
bottom  of  the  matter. 

"A  flat  boat,"  said  he,  "is  a  Western  invention,  is 
a  punt  a  hundred  feet  long,  or,  to  be  more  exact,  is  a 
rectangular  water-tight  box,  sixty  to  a  hundred  feet 
long,  eighteen  to  twenty-two  feet  wide,  six  to  eight  feet 
deep,  and  is  the  cheapest  means  of  moving  freight  ever 
devised  in  the  world,  if  we  except  rafts,  and  even  these 
need  not  be  excepted,  because  they  float  in  the  water, 
while  a  flat  boat  conveys  its  load  dry. 

"Of  course  you  never  saw  a  flat  boat  built  and  never 
will.  They  were  an  evolution  of  this  valley,  and  not 
known  elsewhere.  Get  out  that  notebook  and  I  will  go 
over  the  process.  It  will  not  involve  the  calculus.,  or 
quadratic  equations  even.  I  will  not  touch  on  radiant 
matter,  electrical  hysteresis,  or  the  fourth  dimension, 
still  the  art  deserves  a  place  in  that  notebook  among 
other  imperishable  facts  to  be  dug  out  at  some  future 
age. 

"To  begin,  suppose  two  or  three  men  that  you  would 
call  farmers  living  on  one  of  the  small  tributaries  of  the 
Ohio  River,  for  example,  have  during  the  winter  months 
'cleared  land,'  and  in  so  doing  have  prepared  a  hundred 
cords  of  hard  wood,  that  is?  beech,  maple  and  hickory, 
also  have  some  bacon,  hoop  poles  and  tan  bark,  perhaps 
corn,  pumpkins,  dried  fruit,  shingles,  cedar  posts,  or 
other  commodities  to  sell.  These  things  are  worth 
money  at  Cincinnati,  Louisville,  or  other  cities  on  the 
river,  and  worth  nothing  whatever  on  the  ground  where 
produced.  Steamboats  cannot  come  there,  and  hauling 
is  out  of  the  question,  so  these  men  take  their  axes  and 
go  out  into  the  forest  to  hunt  up  a  'gunwale  tree,'  that 
is  a  tulip  or  poplar,  as  they  call  it,  large  enough  to 


152  NOTES  BY   A   STUDENT. 

make  a  pair  of  gunwales,  or  'gunnels,'  to  construct  a 
flat  boat.  Up  to  sixty  feet  long,  or  even  one  hundred 
feet  long  one  tree  will  do,  but  the  longer  gunwales  have 
to  be  spliced. 

"The  tree  is  felled,  and  squared  by  hewing  to  lines, 
twenty  or  twenty-four  by  sixteen  inches.  This  beam, 
weighing  tons,  is  then  raised  six  feet  or  so  by  rocking  it 
on  a  crib  on  the  seesaw  method,  and  is  slit  edgewise  into 
two  parts  with  a  whipsaw.  These  gunwales,  8  by  20 
inches,  are  then  dragged  down  to  the  water's  edge,  and 
set  on  their  edge  on  launching  Avays.  Each  end  is  bev- 
eled off  for  the  rake,  end  beams  are  framed  in,  so  also 
cross  timbers  about  5  by  8  inches  laid  flat  about  six 
feet  apart,  tenoned  and  draw  pinned  into  the  gunwales 
four  inches  below  the  edge.  Next  there  is  pinned  on 
these  'stringers'  about  2y2  by  6  inches,  running  fore 
and  aft,  three  feet  apart.  These  will  be  one  and  one- 
half  inches  below  the  gunwale,  which  is  then  rebated 
about  two  inches  back  to  let  in  the  bottom  planking, 
one  and  one-half  inches  thick,  put  on  crosswise,  every- 
thing pinned  with  hard  wood  trenails  about  one  inch 
in  diameter. 

"The  boat  is  then  caulked  with  tow  or  oakum,  butt 
and  main  seams  pitched  with  tar,  and  is  ready  to 
launch.  The  gunwales  are  raised  with  levers,  some 
greased  slide  boards  put  on  the  ways,  and  the  immense 
shallow  box  is  shoved  into  the  water,  and  now  comes  a 
puzzle.  The  boat  is  upside  down,  and  must  be  turned 
over.  To  do  this  some  planks  are  set  up  along  one  side, 
and  the  bottom  is  loaded  with  stones  and  earth,  stones 
alone  if  there  are  enough  at  hand,  until  the  boat  is 
sunk  below  the  surface  of  the  water  several  inches,  the 
projecting  stones  indicating  buoyancy.  This  nonde- 


NOTES  BY   A   STUDENT.  153 


script  creation  is  then  moved  into  deep  water,  in  a 
'hole/  as  they  call  it,  and  a  number  of  people  standing 
on  the  bottom  begin,  as  fast  as  possible,  to  pitch  the 
stones  to  the  side  having  the  guard  plank.  In  a  few 
minutes  that  side  begins  to  sink.  The  stones  all  slide 
over  to  the  low  side  and  the  boat  turns  over.  The  peo- 
ple in  the  meantime  rush  to  the  high  gunwale  and 
crawl  over,  or  else  swim  out  of  the  way,  which  is  the 
true  conventional  custom.  The  boat  is  then  towed  back 
to  the  shore,  baled  out,  and  is  ready  for  studding. 
These  are  mortised  into  the  gunwales,  about  three  feet 
apart  all  around,  the  side  planking  is  put  on  and 
caulked. 

"If  to  carry  dry  freight,  a  roof  is  sprung  on,  that  is, 
curved  about  half  an  inch  to  a  foot,  the  boards  crosswise 
and  full  length.  If  cord  wood,  timber,  hoop  poles, 
staves,  coal,  or  other  freight  not  needing  cover,  is  to  be 
carried,  the  boat  is  left  open,  and  is  ready  for  loading 
as  soon  as  the  sides  are  put  on.  The  draught  will  be 
two  to  three  feet  for  a  dry  load,  for  timber  of  any 
kind  about  four  feet.  If  for  coalA  stone  or  other  min- 
eral, the  draught  may  be  nine  feet. 

"A  'check-post'  is  set  in,  and  braced  by  the  cargo. 
The  sides  are  held  out  against  external  pressure  in  the 
same  manner,  indeed  the  whole  thing  is  only  a  water- 
proof covering  for  the  load.  An  immense  'sweep,' 
fifty  to  sixty  feet  long,  is  mounted  at  the  stern  for 
steering,  and  a  pair  of  shorter  sweeps  for  pulling  head- 
way, which  in  extreme  cases  may  reach  half  a  mile  an 
hour. 

"This  great  ark  floats  to  her  destination,  steered  care- 
fully. 'How?'  you  will  ask.  In  the  strong  current 
and  slope  of  the  river  the  boat  crawls  through  the  water, 


154  NOTES   BY   A   STUDENT. 

not  as  fast  as  a  North  River  steamer,  but  at  a  rate  of 
one  to  two  feet  a  minute.  How  and  why  you  may  find 
out  for  yourself.  The  main  thing1  is  stopping  these 
boats  in  a  current  of  three  to  six  miles  an  hour.  To  do 
this  requires  skill,  dexterity  and  good  judgment.  To 
land,  the  bow  of  the  boat  is  set  quartering  down  stream. 
A  rope  200  to  400  yards  long  is  coiled  in  the  stern  of  a 
skiff.  A  good  man  takes  the  oars,  and  the  most  active 
and  coolest  one  at  hand  takes  charge  of  the  line,  which 
runs  out  over  the  stern  as  the  skiff  is  rowed  ashore.  As 
soon  as  the  skiff  strikes  the  shore  the  rear  or  line  man 
turns  over  the  rope  coil,  seizes  the  free  end,  springs 
past  the  oarsman,  and  runs  up  the  bank  to  find  some 
solid  object  to  make  fast  to.  A  tree  or  large  root,  or 
some  immovable  object.  A  Met  go'  hitch  is  made,  and 
the  signal  given  to  begin  'checking,'  which  is  a  danger- 
ous operation.  About  three  turns  are  made  around  the 
check-post,  and  the  line  fed  out  under  such  tension  as 
it  will  stand.  The  smoke  will  sometimes  rise  from  the 
post,  caused  by  the  friction.  The  boat  begins  to  swing, 
and  at  the  same  time  move  toward  the  shore,  and  is 
gradually  brought  to  rest  with  the  bow  or  end  up 
stream.  If  there  is  too  much  delay,  and  remember  all 
this  has  to  be  done  in  a  minute  or  two,  the  check  man 
cries  'let  go,'  and  the  line  man  casts  off,  comes  on  board, 
the  line  is  hauled  in,  and  another  attempt  made  after 
the  boat  can  again  be  moved  out  and  laid  in  position. 

"This  is  often  done  in  the  night.  Landings  are 
made,  indeed  must  be  made,  at  city  wharves.  The  line 
man  must  find  a  ring  bolt,  the  water-wheel  beam  of  a 
steamboat,  anything  in  sight  to  make  fast  to,  and  he 
doos  it.  Protests  do  not  go,  he  will  hitch  to  anything, 
fight  to  retain  his  hold.  Remember,  he  must  be  ready 


NOTES  BY  A  STUDENT.  155 


to  let  go  at  a  signal  from  the  boat.  If  his  hitch  gives 
way  he  is  disgraced,  if  he  cannot  let  go  he  is  disgraced, 
if  he  falls  in  the  river  and  don't  drown  he  is  disgraced. 
The  ethics  of  the  trade  are  distinct.  Yon  may  laugh, 
but  I  would  rather  go  aloft  to  furl  a  royal  in  a  gale 
than  to  go  out  with  a  flat  boat  check  line. 

"At  the  end  of  the  journey  the  boat  was  taken  to 
pieces  and  sold  as  sawn  timber.  The  cost  in  former 
times  was  from  $1.00  to  $1.25  a  lineal  foot,  and  the 
wrecking  value  is  half  as  much  or  more.  It  is  all  done 
now;  railways  reach  the  inland  streams,  timber  is  too 
dear  to  build  flat  boats  with,  and  the  men  who  operated 
them  are  in  the  cemeteries." 

I  am  beginning  to  think  that  water-craft,  that  is, 
human  craft  on  the  water,  is  much  the  same  as  it  is  in 
animals.  It  is  absorbed  in  an  insensible  way  through- 
out a  term  of  years,  or  a  lifetime,  and  is  not  a  specific 
thing  to  be  learned,  like  building  houses  or  shoeing 
horses.  A  kind  of  second  nature.  Put  a  water-skilled 
man  on  a  steamer,  a  ship,  in  a  boat,  on  a  raft,  or  a  life 
buoy,  it  is  all  the  same.  He  knows  the  traits  and 
trends  of  the  water,  and  how  to  keep  on  the  surface  of 
it.  Geometry,  dynamics,  mechanics,  or  even  a  knowl- 
edge of  Greek  and  Hebrew,  will  do  him  no  more  good 
than  a  heathen's  talisman,  unless  he  has  been  trained 
to  the  water,  on  and  in  the  water.  It  is  like  gymnastics 
and  circus  riding,  no  one  can  do  even  a  little  of  it  with- 
out training,  and  they  must  begin  young.  There  is  a 
touch  of  heredity  in  it,  too.  I  do  not  mean  what  is 
called  navigation  in  its  technical  sense,  finding  the  way 
in  open  seas.  That  is  science,  and  not  a  very  abstruse 
one  at  that,  but  how  to  clubhaul  a  ship,  or  land  a  flat 
boat,  is  another  matter. 


156  NOTES   BY   A    STUDENT. 


CHAPTER    XXIII. 

A   PITCH-PINE    COUNTRY A    SCREED    ON    SLAVERY HOW    TO 

SET  A   TELEGRAPH  POLE BORING  OUT  A  FLY  WHEEL — 

HOW    TO    SETTLE    A    NEW    COUNTRY- 
PACIFIC  COAST. 


— At  breakfast  one  morning  my  uncle 
announced  his  intention  of  going  straight  to  New  York. 

I  was  not  sorry. at  his  decision,  because  it  was  obvious 
he  felt  like  Marius  at  the  ruins  of  Carthage.  His  old 
remembrances  were  of  a  brighter  period  in  this  country, 
before  the  carpet  baggers  and  the  railways  had  changed 
all.  I  knew  his  estimate  of  what  we  call  progress,  and 
it  was  not  all  in  harmony  with  popular  opinion.  I 
therefore  asked  some  questions  about  his  intended  route, 
remarking  that  we  would  certainly  pass  through  a  rich 
country  until  we  left  the  Gulf  level. 

"Rich,"  said  he?  "look  out  for  pitch  pine,  white  clay 
and  water.  No  one  knows  why  there  is  not  fifty  feet 
of  sedimentary  deposit  all  over  the  country,  especially 
from  here  to  Mobile,  which  we  will  pass  through,  and 
perhaps  there  is,  somewhere  down  below,  but  on  top, 
pitch  pine.  This  tree  one  may  liken  to  the  mangy 
dogs  of  Cairo,  in  Egypt,  I  mean,  always  associated  with 
poverty.  When  it  is  not  pitch  pine  it  is  cypress  and 
water,  but  of  good  healthy  timber  and  growth  of  any- 
thing, don't  hope  for  it.  You  will  not  see  an  acre  of 
good  warm  soil,  or  natural  thrift,  until  we  are  some 
hundreds  of  feet  above  the  Gulf.  The  French  had  a 
hard  time  to  find  the  mouth  of  the  Mississippi,  from 
seaward,  I  mean,  and  a  heroic  courage  in  attempting  to 
found  a  city  or  cities  when  they  finally  did  get  in.  They 


NOTES  BY  A   STUDENT.  157 

knew,  however,  what  was  above.  La  Salle  had  come 
down  the  other  way,  and  the  explorers  well  knew  they 
were  in  the  door  to  a  Continent.  Their  settlement 
around  here,  and  the  development  of  the  country,  is  the 
only  creditable  work  the  French  ever  performed.  They 
are  not  a  colonizing  nation,  always  sighing  and  hoping 
for  return  to  La  Belle  France,  and  no  one  can  wonder, 
perhaps,  at  that.  Here  and  in  Lower  Canada  they 
'stuck  it  out,'  as  the  saying  is,  and  in  the  two  climatic 
extremes  of  the  country.  How  it  was  done  I  cannot 
imagine. ' ' 

The  trip  to  Mobile  verified  my  uncle's  description;  so 
did  the  city.  From  a  prosperous  shipping  port,  and 
great  commercial  city,  it  had  become  a  wreck.  Whole 
blocks  with  low  brick  buildings,  iron  shuttered,  were 
quiet  and  desolate,  grass  in  the  streets,  the  wharves 
rotten,  and  the  great,  sullen,  muddy  Alabama  Eiver 
crawling  by.  Now  and  then  an  ill-rigged  vessel  loaded 
with  pitch  pine  boards,  perhaps  some  barrels  of  rosin, 
and  some  cotton  from  the  interior,  but  not  much. 

Formerly  it  was  a  nigger  to  a  bale,  or  a  bale  to  the 
nigger,  now  it  is  a  bale  to  the  farm  with  the  "nigger" 
thrown  in.  There  are  cotton  "patches,"  perhaps  plan- 
tations, but  not  seen  from  the  railway,  the  nigger 
"patch"  is  the  rule.  "There  seems  to  be  something 
the  matter  with  this  country,"  said  I  to  my  uncle, 
"things  do  not  look  right.  It  should  be  prosperous, 
and  will  be,  perhaps,  some  time,  but  just  now  there  is  a 
kind  of  spell  over  it." 

"Yes,  Tech,  you  are  right  that  far,  but  don't  attempt 
to  analyze  the  matter.  It  involves  sentiment,  roguery, 
philosophy,  biology,  sociology  and  history  t  with  a 
smattering  of  thievery  thrown  in.  Slavery  is  at  the 


158  NOTES   BY  A   STUDENT. 

bottom,  not  as  a  cause  direct,  but  as  a  circumstance, 
one  may  say.  Do  you  know  what  slavery  is?  In  the 
abstract  it  is  an  inequality  of  human  rights,  but  is  not 
an  inequality  of  conditions.  A  negro  may  be  a  slave, 
and  more  free  than  the  man  who  owns  him.  Anti- 
slavery  is  a  sentiment,  often  an  illogical  one.  In  one 
sense?  and  a  strong  sense?  a  soldier  or  sailor  is  a  slave, 
so  is  the  dependent  man^  and  so  are  all  men  in  the  de- 
gree to  which  they  must  conform  to  the  rules  and  laws 
of  society. 

"Southern  slavery,  regulated  by  humane  laws,  as  it 
might  have  been,  and  its  worst  features  left  to  expire, 
as  they  would  have  done  in  time,  would  have  been  much 
better  than  a  war  that  destroyed  350,000  men,  gave  the 
negroes  a  vote  and  a  'Freedman's  Bureau.'  It  takes  a 
great  deal  of  slavery  to  balance  a  very  little  war,  and 
not  very  much  statesmanship  to  avoid  both. 

"Note  these  telegraph  poles  all  leaning  inward,  or 
toward  the  direction  of  strain.  The  Cincinnati  Southern 
Railway  was  the  first  and  almost  the  only  line  that  set 
poles  in  that  manner ;  others  set  them  to  lean  backward, 
away  from  the  strain.  Naturally,  you  would  say,  but 
wrong.  When  you  drive  a  stake  to  sustain  strain  al- 
ways lean  it  toward  the  pull,  not  away  from  it,  as 
ninety-nine  in  a  hundred  are  driven." 

The  last  proposition  was  a  new  one  to  me,  and  when 
my  uncle  went  on  to  make  a  sketch  and  show  me  how- by 
leaning  the  poles  as  seemed  the  wrong  way  the  fulcra 
were  obviously  strengthened.  Compression,  or  down 
strain  at  the  top,  and  upward  strain  at  the  bottom.  It 
is  perfectly  simple,  only  common  sense. 

It  happened  to  be  Sunday,  and  fortunately,  too,  be- 
cause we  saw  the  "blackbird"  element  to  the  best  ad- 


NOTES   BY   A   STUDENT.  159 


vantage.  At  each  station?  perched  on  fences,  or  sitting 
on  logs  or  benches,  were  rows  of  negroes  in  their  holiday 
attire.  Little  cotton  "patches"  right  and  left,  then 
hills,  and  a  beautiful  country,  hundreds  of  miles  across, 
finally  Birmingham,  Alabama,  where  a  sale  of  lots  was 
going  on,  and  people  paying  money  in  thousands  that 
would  not  in  their  time  come  back  in  hundreds  even. 
The  "boom"  idea,  an  insane  kind  of  speculation,  not 
based  on  reason,  facts,  or  even  common  sense,  born  of 
a  state  of  mind  common  to  these  people^  isolated  in 
trade,  religion  and  politics.  I  heard  two  corner  lots 
knocked  down  at  $3,000  apiece  that  it  is  quite  sure  are 
not  worth  $300  now,  and  were  not  then  by  any  logical 
reasoning  that  could  be  arrived  at. 

In  time  we  passed  through  Cincinnati,  Pittsburgh, 
Philadelphia  and  New  York,  the  notebook  worn,  well 
filled,  except  room  for  a  summary  by  my  uncle,  whose 
observations  were  not  like  mine,  of  the  present  only, 
but  of  the  past  as  well. 

"Tech,"  said  he,  "a  man  is  a  creation  of  his  en- 
vironment, so  are  his  works.  A  sparse  population  is 
provincial,  and  must  be  so,  also  is  diversified,  a  mixture, 
so  to  speak.  One  time  I  saw  in  Kentucky  a  flywheel 
bored  with  a  sweep  turned  by  a  negro.  They  had  a  cast- 
iron  boring  bar  passing  through  two  floors  of  the 
building.  Wooden  bearings  were  made  by  bolting 
blocks  against  the  floor  beams.  The  bar  extended  about 
three  feet  above  the  upper  floor,  had  a  sweep  of  wood 
clamped  on  the  upper  end.  The  bar  was  suspended 
vertically  by  a  screw-threaded  rod  extending  up  to  the 
third  floor,  fitted  with  turnbuckles  to  raise  the  bar  for 
feeding.  The  flywheel  was  laid  on  the  lower  floor,  and 
'trammed'  by  the  bar,  a  cutter  was  wedged  into  a  slot, 


160  NOTES   BY    A.   STUDENT. 


two  negroes  turned  the  sweep,  another  worked  the  turn- 
buckle,  and  a  white  man  watched  the  operation.  The 
wheel  was  bored  in  half  a  day  at  an  expense  of  not 
more  than  three  dollars^  with  tools  not  worth  twenty- 
five  dollars  in  all,  and  was  bored  true. 

"Twenty  miles  away  at  Cincinnati  (the  wheel  boring 
was  done  in  Maysville,  Kentucky),  there  were  being 
made  steam  fire  engines,  also  some  very  creditable  work 
on  mathematical  instruments.  That  is  what  I  call 
diversity,  the  crude  and  capable  in  close  relation.  It 
is  just  so  in  other  things.  All  kinds  of  men  and  all 
kinds  of  ideas  come  together  in  the  western  country. 
Madame  Trollope,  Anthony  Trollope's  mother,  lived  in 
Cincinnati  then;  a  Dr.  Mussey  there  was  one  of  the 
foremost  surgeons,  so  were  other  doctors  then  famous. 
Tosso,  who  lived  across  the  river,  was  a  famous  Italian 
violinist  and  musician.  Elbowing  these  people  were  the 
Indians,  the  unspeakable  corncracker,  the  blasphemous 
flat  boatmen.  No  such  medley  ever  met  in  the  Eastern 
States.  Colonel  Carter  of  Carterville,  pronounced  '  Catah ' 
of  '  Catahville, '  in  Kentucky,  sometimes  met  psalm- 
singing  Hezekiah  Hickings,  of  Salem,  Mass.  John 
Murrel,  professional  murderer,  of  Mississippi,  preached 
the  gospel  when  there  were  no  rich  victims,  but  this 
section,  now  the  middle  of  the  country,  while  it  had 
diversity  at  the  time  of  its  making  up,  had  what  the 
extreme  West  never  did,  that  is,  the  honest  and  indus- 
trious farmer  with  as  much  land  as  he  could  use,  and  no 
more. 

"Illinois  was  the  first  to  experience  modern  methods. 
A  railway  grant  took  a  great  swath  right  down  through 
the  middle  of  the  State,  thousand  acre  farms  began  to 
appear,  the  'boomer,'  too2  came,  but  he  was  a  mild 


NOTES  BY  A   STUDENT.  161 

specimen  compared  to  his  counterpart  of  our  time.  He 
got  up  towns,  marked  out  theaters,  court  houses,  ex- 
changes, churches,  and  all  that  on  paper,  but  the  people 
pressed  in  so  hard  that  the  boomers'  schemes  were  ac- 
tually carried  out,  at  least  materialized  as  the  spiritual- 
ists say,  to  an  extent  that  a  man  of  thirty  who  bought 
town  lots,  when  fifty  years  of  age  saw  his  money  come 
back  again. 

"There  were  no  gold  mines,  no  fruit  culture  at  $300 
an  acre  of  product,  and  $900  for  the  land,  no  manufac- 
tures that  were  to  pay  200  per  cent,  a  year,  but  only 
farming  and  cattle,  so  the  boomer  was  curbed  in  re- 
sources, his  fancy  could  not  roam  beyond  100  bushels 
of  corn  to  the  acre,  and  a  railway  on  two  sides  of  each 
farm. 

"At  the  Missouri  things  began  to  change  rapidly,  and 
from  there  on  to  the  Pacific  Ocean  the  settlement  and 
development  of  the  country  followed  a  different  plan, 
but  this  we  will  see  some  time?  health  and  opportunity 
permitting.  I  want  some  salt-water  service  now,  and 
will  not  expect  an  attack  of  land  fever  for  some  time 
to  come.  When  I  do  I  will  come  ashore  on  the  other 
side  of  the  continent.  This  railway  travel  I  don 't  like. ' ' 

My  uncle  never  forgot  and  never  changed  his  plans. 
"Do  not  drift  with  circumstances,"  he  would  say, 
"anchor  or  sail,"  and  this  he  did.  When  he  mentioned 
the  Pacific  Coast  the  thing  was  done,  and  now  for  some 
long  months  in  the  * '  works, ' '  self  denial  and  hard  work, 
but  after  all  the  next  most  attractive  thing  to  roaming 
with  my  worthy  uncle. 


162  NOTES   BY   A   STUDENT. 


CHAPTER    XXIV. 

ON      THE      PACIFIC      COAST TALKING      SVENSK MOVING      A 

COUNTRY CANADIAN       PACIFIC VANCOUVER — 

HOW      CLIMATES     ARE      MADE. 

— A  year  and  a  half  gone  I  found  lying  at 


the  back  of  my  draughting  board  one  morning  a  letter 
bearing  the  well-known  chirography  of  my  uncle,  a 
foreign,  stamp,  evidences  of  wear,  and  bulky  for  a  letter 
of  his.  It  was  from  Southampton,,  England,  and  ran 
thus,  omitting  the  head: 

' '  We  go  out  to  the  west  coast  of  America  from  here : 
to  Vancouver.  The  ship  is  there  to  be  turned  over  to 
new  owners,  and  I  am  going  ashore,  north  if  alone,  south 
if  you  will  bring  that  everlasting  notebook  and  join  me. 
We  go  through  the  Straits,  and  fifty  days  from  now 
should  be  in  Burrards  Inlet,  they  call  it  (outlet  it 
should  be)  for  the  Fraser  River,  but  geography  aside 
the  point  is  high  enough  to  start  from.  Write  me  at 
Vancouver. ' ' 

The  bulk  was  made  up  of  a  map.  I  counted  off  the 
degrees  of  longitude,  and  was  appalled  at  the  distances, 
but  here  of  all  other  trips  was  the  one  desired,  and  de- 
cision did  not  lag.  The  notebook  was  looked  up,  other 
preparations  made,  four  long  weeks,  and  off.  Here  is 
the  first  note: 

—I  wanted  a  look  at  St.  Paul  and  St.  An- 
thony again,  and  went  there,  then  turned  off  at  a  right 
angle  to  Winnipeg,  and  on  the  way  there  saw  the  wheat 
country  and  Scandinavians. 

They  elect  Norse  congressmen  somewhere  up  in  this 
region,  and  should,  I  think,  have  several  if  fairly  rep- 


NOTES   BY   A   STUDENT.  163 

resented.  Half  or  more  of  the  population  bore  the  im- 
press of  "Scandia"  in  appearance  and  tongue,  speaking 
the  strange  idiom  which  no  one  except  Bill  Nye  ever 
learned  to  imitate.  Here  for  a  divergence,  let  it  be 
written  that  the  nearer  the  analogy  between  two  tongues 
the  more  difficult  it  is  to  learn  both.  A  Russian  may 
ask  you  to  put  from  two  to  four  v's  in  front  of  a  word, 
v-v-v-vitch  for  example,  and  after  a  struggle  or  two  it  is 
done  completely,  just  as  the  Russian  did  it. 

A  German  may  ask  you  to  spell  horse  with  a  p  and  an 
f  together,  pferde.  You  do  it  with  a  trial  or  two,  and 
can  ever  after  in  good  German,  but  let  a  Chinaman  give 
you  a  pair  of  his  monosyllabic  words  that  sound  like 
clii  eking,  and  a  hundred  trials  floors  you.  The  gentle 
Swede  tells  you  his  language  is  I'M  at  lara,  "light  to 
learn,"  which  is  nearly  English,  and  you  can  set  that 
clown  to  begin  with.  It  seems  simple,  but  it  is  not.  The 
cadence,,  inflection,  modulation,  or  whatever  it  may  be 
calledj  is  impossible.  A  thousand  elusive  attempts  will 
do  no  good,  a  breath  betrays  you.  It  is  just  like  music, 
in  fact  a  musician  learns  such  sounds  much  easier.  I 
do  not  mean  the  language  is  musical,  although  that 
might  be  said  of  the  Swedish  branch.  It  is  a  curious 
indescribable  sound,  ten  times  as  difficult  to  learn  as  a 
pile  of  consonants  in  Polish. 

—These  Scandinavians  go  up  there  into 
Dakota  to  raise  wheat.  They  also  raise  the  soil,  and 
ship  it  off  by  rail.  While  this  thin  or  thick  layer  of 
loam  was  made,  throughout  many  centuries  as  a  buffalo 
pasture,  these  animals  remove  nothing.  Their  manure, 
carcases,  horns  and  hoofs  remained  on  or  in  the  ground. 
So  with  all  vegetable  growth,  nothing  was  taken  away, 
but  now  wheat  is  grown.  The  grain  is  sent  away,  the 


164  NOTES  BY  A   STUDENT. 

straw  is  burned,  or  sent  away  also.  All  animal  growth 
is  sent  away,  and  the  essential  elements  of  the  soil  goes 
along.  In  twenty  years  more  the  whole  top  will  be 
gone,  the  people,  too,  unless  they  are  buried  here.  It 
will,  like  the  tobacco  districts  in  Eastern  Virginia,  re- 
quire a  century  of  rest.  The  country  "seems"  all 
right  just  now,  but  it  is  not,  or  at  least  will  not  be  long. 

Winnipeg,  Red  River  of  the  North,  first  post  of  the 
Hudson  Bay  Company  and  the  Canadian  Pacific  Rail- 
way, are  found  after  a  long  ride  over  a  ramshackle 
railway,  with  an  interlude  of  customs  inspection  of  bag- 
gage— an  intolerable  nuisance.  This  straggling  town  of 
Winnipeg  betokens  in  various  ways  its  perennial  or  half 
yearly  business.  It  is  of  the  hibernating  class.  In  the 
winter  the  streets  are  paved  with  ice,  and  the  country 
clothed  in  snow,  the  thermometer  hovering  about  zero, 
sometimes  there,  but  oftener  far  below,  away  down  to 
thirty  or  even  forty  minus. 

The  Canadian  Pacific  Railway  is  mainly  on  the  Ameri- 
can system,  with  some  features  of  the  British,  and  so 
far  as  I  can  see  is  by  far  the  best  of  the  trans-continental 
routes.  It  is  a  complete  line  for  one  thing,  under  one 
management  from  the  Gulf  of  St.  Lawrence  to  Puget 
Sound.  There  are  not  many  differences  from  the  Ameri- 
can lines  of  the  best  class,  in  so  far  as  machinery,  car- 
riages, and  so  on,  if  we  compare  with  the  best  lines,  but 
there  is  a  good  deal  of  difference  in  what  the  naval  folks 
call  the  * '  personnel. ' ' 

I  had  just  got  settled  into  a  comfortable  seat  in  a  glass- 
lined  smoking  room  at  Winnipeg,  when  an  official  of  the 
porter  class  halted  in  front  of  me,  and  after  a  military 
salute  delivered  the  following  address :  ' '  Sir,  I  am  to  in- 
form you  that  among  your  baggage  there  is  a  roll  of 


NOTES  BY   A   STUDENT.  165 


wraps  with  a  cane  and  umbrella  in  the  middle  that  can  be 
drawn  out;  the  company  cannot  be  responsible  for  these, 
but  will  carry  them  at  your  risk,  or  I  will  remove  and 
bring  them  in  here  to  be  placed  at  your  own  risk." 

Behind  the  train  at  night  we  could  see  at  all  times 
lights  moving  on  the  line,  and  for  explanation  we  were 
informed  that  a  patrol  went  over  the  road  every  time 
a  train  passed,  night  or  day.  The  line  is  built  on  an 
embankment  from  four  to  five  feet  high  across  all  plains, 
hundreds  of  miles  of  this,  to  prevent  snow  blockade.  By 
the  way,  there  is  a  bit  of  philosophy  in  this  matter,  and 
good  philosophy  too.  There  are  no  snow  fences  or 
guards,  such  as  are  seen  on  the  lines  to  the  southward. 
There  is  as  much  or  more  snow  to  contend  with,  but 
these  embankments  cause  a  break  in  the  drift.  The 
snow  shoots  over  and  piles  up  beyond,  but  does  not  stop 
on  the  railway.  In  the  Selkirk  range  of  mountains, 
where  there  is  the  same  snowfall  as  in  the  Sierra 
Mountains,  the  line  is  kept  clear  by  snow  sheds  and 
powerful  plow  engines  that  follow  up  and  down  during 
the  time  of  a  heavy  snow. 

Speaking  of  snow  sheds,  they  have  $3,000,000  worth 
of  them  on  this  route,  all  in  the  Pacific  range  of  moun- 
tains. They  are  wholly  unlike  those  to  the  south,  are 
not  snow  sheds  at  all,  but  "avalanche  guards."  The 
mountains  are  built  on  a  different  plan  up  here, 
twice  as  precipitous,  and  no  one  can  see  why  the  sides 
do  not  run  down  into  the  valleys.  The  guards  consist  of 
diverting  walls  in  dangerous  places,  and  in  addition  the 
sheds,  which  are  arranged  to  "jump"  the  avalanche  over 
the  line.  They  have  but  one  slope,  corresponding  to  the 
mountain  side,  but  more  flat,  and  are  made  of  masses 


166  NOTES  BY  A  STUDENT. 


of  timber,  strong  enough  to  shed  earth  and  rocks  as  well 
as  snow. 

In  time  we  came  to  and  crossed  the  Columbia  River, 
to 'my  surprise.  What  it  is  doing  away  round  here  in 
this  part  of  the  world  a  map  only  will  explain,  and 
navigable  too.  It  curves  away  to  the  north,  and  is  a 
better  river  here  for  steamboats  than  three  hundred 
miles  farther  down,  where  it  goes  tumbling  over  rapids 
that  defy  steamboats.  Then  finally  the  Fraser  River 
Canyon,  Burrard's  Inlet,  Saltwater  and  Vancouver,  B.  C. 
There  is  another  Vancouver  in  Washington,  on  the  Co- 
lumbia River,  an  old  fortress  and  not  much  more,  but 
here  is  a  city,  a  young  one,  but  with  many  of  the  at- 
tributes of  age,  or  of  progress  rather.  Thirty-five  miles 
of  streets,  as  many  miles  of  water  pipes,  and  every 
house  in  the  "new  town"  is  of  brick  and  stone.  No 
shanties,  and  none  permitted.  It  is  a  theoretical  town, 
laid  down  at  the  beginning  to  a  definite  plan,  and  the 
specifications  strictly  adhered  to.  A  forest  was  here 
only  nine  years  ago,  now  quays  and  steamer  lines  to 
China,  Japan,  Australia,  Fiji  Islands,  Hawaii  and  all 
coast  ports  north  and  south. 

I  learned  all  this  before  my  arrival,  and  at  the  Hotel 
Vancouver  where  I  had  the  happiness  to  meet  my  uncle 
in  good  health  and  spirits,  "getting  his  sea  legs  off/' 
as  he  said. 

—A  look  around  here  develops  the  fact 
that  there  is  an  old  or  older  Vancouver  half  a  mile  away, 
made  of  wood,  containing  saw  mills,  shops  and  a  lake 
or  pond,  communicating  in  some  way  with  the  bay.  It 
is  a  typical  timber  town,  one  of  the  kind  that  burns 
up  clean  once  in  a  dozen  years,  permitting  improvements 
and  extensions.  A  town  built  with  wooden  houses  must 


NOTES   BY   A   STUDENT. 


by  the  law  of  chances  burn  up  whenever  the  houses  are 
near  enough  together  to  permit  a  conflagration.  It  is 
the  same  everywhere,  and  old  Vancouver  has  burned 
up  a  time  or  two.  The  new  one  will  not  burn  up,  it  has 
been  built  as  an  investment  by  rich  people,  some  of 
them  English  noblemen,  who  are  stockholders  in  the 
Canadian  Pacific  Railroad.  The  revenues  of  this  line 
are  paid  to  the  shareholders,  and  carried  to  a  surplus 
account,  now  large  enough,  I  was  informed,  to  pay  div- 
idends for  four  years  if  no  earnings  were  made  in  that 
time.  I  am  skeptical  about  this,  but  it  may  be  so. 

—The  weather  for  the  season  was  warm 
and  comfortable;  we  were  in  the  latitude  of  Newfound- 
land, about  49  north,  and  this  subject  was  referred  to 
my  uncle. 

"Climate,"  said  he,  "is  a  water  problem,  the  coast 
is  what  the  sea  makes  it.  Here  the  water  is  coming 
from  the  Sea  of  Japan,  and  is  warm.  The  country  is 
the  same  back  to  the  mountains,  where  the  wind  is 
broken,  and  sent  up,  dissipated  we  may  call  it,  takes 
the  temperature  due  to  a  high  altitude  and  descends 
again  cold  and  frozen.  Look  at  the  New  England  coast, 
cold  in  winter  as  Greenland,  and  compare  with  Great 
Britain,  four  to  six  degrees  north  of  there,  with  a  mild 
climate  in  comparison.  The  Gulf  Stream  of  warm  water 
flows  parallel  to  the  coast  up  to  Cape  Hatteras,  then 
diverges  outward,  permitting  the  cold  water  coming 
around  from  the  coast  of  Labrador  and  Newfoundland 
to  wedge  inside.  This  chills  the  whole  country. 

"The  Gulf  Stream  takes  a  course  across  the  Atlantic 
Ocean,  sweeps  past  the  British  Isles,  touching  most  on 
Ireland?  then  crosses  the  North  Sea,  and  switches  around 
so  as  to  touch  Norway,  not  much,  but  enough  to  keep 


168  NOTES  BY   A   STUDENT. 


the  Dover  Fjord  open  all  winter,  while  four  or  five 
hundred  miles  south  of  there,  in  Sweden,  it  freezes  ice 
six  feet  thick,  perhaps  twelve,  I  have  seen  it  six. 

"Climate  is  an  accident,  except  as  governed  by  alti- 
tude, and  even  that  is  not  a  constant  cause,  I  mean  in 
assumed  latitudes.  Of  course  it  grows  hot  toward  the 
equator,  but  what  are  these  little  variations  of  tem- 
perature when  not  measured  by  our  susceptibilities,  less 
than  200  degrees,  when  the  range  in  a  laboratory  is  about 
4,000.  Wrought  iron  melts  at  3,000  degrees  above  zero, 
and  mercury  at  38  below.  Both  are  metals. 

"We  are  poor  weak  organisms,  tender  as  to  tempera- 
ture, so  is  all  animal  life,  except  microbes;  they  will 
endure  a  range  of  600  degrees,  so  it  is  said.  I  have  no 
acqaaintance  with  microbes,  however,  and  give  the  facts 
on  hearsay.  The  fact  is,  and  you  can  set  it  down  in 
your  notes,  that  there  is  no  kind  of  physical  fact  we 
deal  with  so  blindly  as  that  of  temperature.  We  re- 
gard one  point  of  the  scale  from  zero  to  100  degrees  as 
the  base,  and  everything  else  above  and  below  as  abnor- 
mal. Mercury  melts  at  38  degrees  below  zero,  and  water 
at  32  degrees  above  zero,  and  evaporates  at  212.  Which 
is  the  normal  or  natural  temperature  of  these?  We 
happen  to  live,  as  before  said,  between  0  and  100  de- 
grees, and  measure  everything  else  accordingly." 


NOTES  BY  A  STUDENT.  169 


CHAPTER    XXV. 

A     CRACKED     COUNTRY — IMAGINATIVE     HISTORY — A     STORM 

FACTORY EUROPEAN    DRESS A    MISTAKE    IN 

HOPS — THE     NORMAL     LINE. 

— There  is  a  strange  mixture  of  land  and 
sea  in  this  country,  about  Piiget  Sound,  and  not  only 
here,  but  all  the  way  to  Alaska.  It  seems  that  there  was 
an  oversight  in  the  geographical  make-up  of  this  coast, 
there  being  no  harbors  from  here  to  San  Francisco, 
nearly  a  thousand  miles  down  the  coast,  and  the  whole 
harbor  accommodation  that  should  exist,  is  concentrated 
here  in  the  Sound. 

Some  recent  writer  says  all  these  water-ways  about 
the  Sound  are  "fissures,"  and  proves  it  too,  by  sections, 
profiles  and  words,  that  is,  shows  that  the  configuration 
is  not  that  produced  by  water  errosion,  but  by  con- 
vulsions of  nature,  that  cracked  the  country  into  fissures 
that  filled  up  with  water,  some  of  them  wholly,  others 
partially. 

This  is  a  novel  theory  to  fit  over  four  thousand  square 
miles  of  water-ways,  sometimes  called  the  American 
Mediterranean,  and  has  for  proof  the  extraordinary  fact 
that  the  depth  of  the  water  is  very  uniformly  in  pro- 
portion to  its  width,  or  is  just  the  opposite  of  basins  or 
channels  formed  by  ordinary  causes.  It  is  a  curious 
proposition,  in  which  the  author  says  all  this  could  be 
done  in  twelve  thousand  years. 

My  uncle  had,  as  usual,  been  looking  into  the  history 
and  affairs  of  the  country  up  here,  and  gave  me  quite 
a  start  in  it,  as  follows: 


170  NOTES  BY  A  STUDENT. 


— "This  country/'  said  he,  "is  the  home 
of  old  lies.  There  have  been  more  cock  and  bull  stories 
told  by  old  navigators  that  came  around  here,  than 
belongs  to  any  other  new  country.  The  Straits,  here 
called  San  Juan  De  Fuca,  were  discovered,  and  the  first 
entrance  made  here,  about  two  hundred  and  forty-five 
years  ago.  De  Fuca  went  home  and  made  up  a  lot  of 
lies  of  a  highly  picturesque  nature. 

"Among  other  things,  the  old  pirate  reported  that  he 
had  found  a  northwest  passage,  that  is,  a  way  around 
the  American  continent2  with  other  stories  about  endless 
gold  and  silver,  a  country  of  riches  and  rare  products, 
an  El  Dorado,  if  his  story  had  been  true.  The  desire  to 
astound  other  people  with  what  one  has  seen  or  dis- 
covered is  an  astonishing  human  trait,  commonly  ex- 
plained on  the  ground  of  the  narrator's  vanity,  but  my 
opinion  is  that  it  comes  from  the  propensity  to  deceive, 
inborn,  and  suppressed  only  by  a  higher  civilization. 

"Another  old  Spanish  navigator,  De  Fonte,  had  been 
here  before  De  Fuca,  about  fifty  years  earlier.  He  pre- 
pared the  first  edition  of  lies,  afterwards  revised  and 
extended  by  De  Fuca.  De  Fonte  says  he  met  with  a 
Yankee  skipper  up  here  and  bought  from  him  a  chart 
of  the  coast,  for  $10,000,  which  chart  was  lost.  This  I 
mention  as  a  sample  of  the  old  chap's  imagination. 

"Captain  Cook  came  up  here  before  he  was  killed  at 
the  Sandwich  Islands,  and  told  about  the  first  truth  re- 
specting the  country  2  but  his  death  prevented  such  use 
of  his  narrative  as  would  have  led  to  an  intelligent  ex- 
planation of  his  discoveries. 

"Then  came  old  Vancouver,  who  sailed  up  past  the 
mouth  of  the  Columbia  River,  declared  there  was  no 
such  a  stream,  but  by  accident  he  tumbled  into  the 


NOTES  BY  A  STUDENT.  171 

Sound  here?  and  then  went  to  work  in  earnest,  and  sur- 
veyed the  whole  water  line.  I  suspect  he  was  a  Dutch- 
man, at  any  rate  his  methods  were  Hollandish.  This 
was  only  a  hundred  years  ago.  Just  think  of  it,  and 
what  a  single  century,  the  span  of  longest  life  for  one 
person,  can  bring  forth." 

—We  went  over  to  Victoria,  a  town  that 
might  be  called  "  Metamorpho. "  There  are  20,000  peo- 
ple here  now;  all  quiet,  staid,  respectable  citizens,  and 
there  are  a  good  many  characteristics  of  a  British  town, 
but  there  are  as  many  people  here  as  there  were  about 
forty  years  ago  when  there  was  a  great  "mining  boom" 
on  the  Fraser  River.  Then  thousands  flocked  in  from 
California  mainly,  a  swarming  out  of  the  placer  mines 
there,  then  getting  bare  in  that  country.  Then  Vic- 
toria was  a  town  of  shanties  and  tents,  whiskey, 
gambling,  fighting  and  turmoil.  Now  it  is  just  the 
opposite.  A  sleepy  town  they  call  it,  but  that  is  no 
description.  It  is  not  "sleepy,"  but  orderly,  and  an 
exception  to  the  rule  thereabouts  of  struggling,  noise, 
disorder  and  "progress,"  as  it  is  called. 

There  is  a  tolerably  large  iron  works  here,  and  we 
were  much  astonished  to  find  the  very  latest  machine 
tools  for  plate  working,  such  as  hydraulic  punches, 
shears  and  riveting  machines,  all  of  English  make.  A 
set  of  marine  engines  of  about  800  horse  power  were 
nearly  done,  and  a  very  creditable  job  in  every  way. 
There  were  some  new  things  here,  as  one  always  finds 
in  an  inland  or  isolated  works,  not  things  to  be  de- 
scribed, but  the  usual  "kinks"  thought  out  and  in- 
vented by  men  who  in  the  cities  would  be  employing 
their  leisure  time  at  a  theater  or  beer  hall. 


172  NOTES   BY  A   STUDENT. 


About  here  begins,  as  my  uncle  says,  the  worst  coast 
in  the  world  for  winter  weather.  "Cape  Flattery," 
said  hej  "is  a  storm  center  where  is  hatched  and  sent 
out  the  storms  that  cross  the  continent  and  sweep  down 
the  coast  to  the  Mexican  line.  Here  the  fog  begins,  and 
thickens  to  the  northmost  point  of  Alaska.  The  coun- 
try up  to  Sitka  may  be  worth  something,  but  the  rest  of 
it  nothing,  unless  for  mineral  products,  and  that  is 
doubtful  if  the  climate  and  other  untoward  circum- 
stances are  taken  into  account. 

"There  are  no  reasons  for  going  to  Alaska  so  long  as 
there  are  other  places  open  to  settlers;  I  mean  to  live 
there.  It  affords  a  grand  scenic  summer  trip  for  four 
months,  and  that  is  the  most  of  it.  There  is  fish,  coal 
and  some  timber  there,  not  to  mention  the  poor  seals 
that  are  butchered  to  make  a  stiff,  uncomfortable  kind 
of  clothing,  not  half  as  good  or  sensible  as  the  Chinese 
produce  with  cotton  batting  and  cheap  cloth.  A  seal- 
skin coat  is  to  the  wearer  what  Alaska  is  to  the  United 
States,  a  matter  of  ornament.  In  fact  the  core  and 
kernel  of  the  whole  purchase  are  at  this  time  two  islands. 
St.  Paul  and  St.  George,  where  the  seals  are  taken,  a 
hundred  thousand  a  year  at  these  places  alone."* 

"Human  dress,"  said  my  uncle,  "is  a  mystery  to  all 
philosophy.  The  more  civilized  we  become,  the  more 
illogical  grows  the  method  of  dress.  Look  at  our  Euro- 
pean and  American  ideas  of  the  matter.  Over  your 
breast,  there  and  up  to  your  neck?  only  your  underwear. 
The  most  vital  part  of  the  human  organism  left  nearly 
bare  to  accommodate  a  breast  pin,  ornamental  shirt  studs 
and  a  necktie.  Around  the  loins,  the  vital  center  of 


"This  was  written  in  1895,  previous  to  the  discovery  of  gold  in  Alaska. 


NOTES  BY  A  STUDENT.  173 


the  system,  so  to  speak,  there  is  a  tolerably  well-devised 
air  pump.  Lean  forward  and  then  back,  and  you  will 
find  a  draught  of  cold  air  drawn  in  and  expelled  upward 
along  the  spine.  The  Latin  branch  of  our  people,  many 
of  them,  wear  a  sash  around  the  waist  to  prevent  this 
air  pumping,  and  enjoy  accordingly  immunity  from 
lumbago  and  renal  diseases. 

"Around  on  your  back  there  are  two  buttons.  What 
for  no  one  can  explain,  but  they  must  be  there.  I  could 
tell  you  if  it  were  worth  while  how  these  buttons  came 
there,  but  am  ashamed  to  admit  having  wasted  time  to 
find  out.  Then  there  are  stiff  cylindrical  hats,  sharp- 
toed  and  broad-toed  shoes,  with  much  more  that  admits 
of  no  rational  explanation,  so  that  sealskin  coats  after 
all  are  not  so  much  of  an  absurdity." 

—From  Victoria  we  went  to  Seattle,  Ta- 
coma  and  Portland,  noting  things  on  the  way,  and  prin- 
cipal among  these  was  a  feverish  unrest,  and  ' '  schemes ' ' 
of  all  kinds  that  seemed  to  engross  public  attention. 
Some  time,  not  very  far  hence,  people  will  wonder  how 
little  they  know  of  what  was  to  take  place  in  the  in- 
dustrial affairs  of  this  country.  There  is  not  a  man 
here  who  will  not  set  down  and  map  out  the  future  of 
these  towns,  the  Sound  country,  and  if  pressed  a  little 
he  will  include  the  Pacific  Coast,  and  even  the  rest  of 
the  continent  in  his  forecast.  One  rule  applies  here  as 
everywhere  else,  the  native  is  no  good  judge  of  his  own 
country.  The  passing  stranger  is  your  best  prophet  if 
he  be  qualified  as  a  prophet  at  all,  and  as  we  are 
strangers  some  prophecy  is  in  order.  It  may  not  be  a 
good  prophecy,  but  it  is  cheap. 

In  the  first  place  this  Sound  country  having  respect 
to  its  natural  conditions  will  become  one  of  .diversified 


174  NOTES  BY  A  STUDENT. 

and  normal  industry,  much  more  so  than  any  other  part 
of  the  Pacific  Coast.  There  is  good  land,  a  mild  climate, 
plenty  of  timber,  water  and  coal,  a  mixed  population, 
a  free  intercourse  with  the  world.  It  is  a  rich  country, 
capable  of  thrift,  and  there  will  be  no  tendency  to 
special  industries.  All  will  nourish,  and  happily  so,  be- 
cause a  manufacturing,  cotton,  sugar  or  fruit-growing 
country,  however  natural  or  necessary,  is  by  no  means 
so  desirable  as  one  of  diversified  industries  and  products. 

They  raise  hops  up  here,  and  at  a  profit,  but  not  a 
great  profit  now.  About  ten  years  ago  there  was  a 
failure  of  the  hop  crop  in  Europe  and  all  over  the 
world,  indeed,  except  on  this  coast.  The  price  went  up 
to  a  fabulous  rate2  more  than  a  dollar  a  pound  and  the 
hop  growers  found  themselves  rich  by  accident.  Not 
one  in  ten  of  them  knew  what  to  do  with  the  money 
they  got,  and  set  out  to  use  it  in  various  ways  that  led 
to  their  ruin.  One  old  German,  who  had  enough  hops 
to  bring  $50,000,  said:  ''What  does  a  Dutchman  like 
me  want  mit  fifty  tousand  tollars?  Tat  will  shpoil  any 
Dutchman,  and  ruins  ter  hop  pisness,  you  mind  that 
now."  This  turned  out  true.  The  brewers  could  not 
buy  hops  at  the  price,  hunted  up  substitutes,  and  quit 
using  hops  to  this  day^  but  this  was  not  all.  Every  one 
all  over  the  country  who  had  land  planted  hops,  and 
the  next  summer  the  price  would  not  pay  for  picking. 

This  story,  related  by  a  traveler,  amused  my  uncle, 
who  saw  in  the  circumstance  a  text  for  one  of  his  ser- 
mons, thus  set  down  in  my  book; 

"All  human  affairs  move  on  a  horizontal  line,  per- 
haps not  a  horizontal  one,  but  ascending  or  descending, 
regularly,  however,  and  wherever  prices,  or  anything 
else,  is  pressed  above  this  line  the  same  thing  must 


NOTES  BY  A  STUDENT.  175 

descend  equally  below  to  fill  out  the  diagram,  so  to  call 
it.  The  space  above  and  below  the  normal  line  must  be 
the  same.  Now  this  applies  to  everything  of  an  econ- 
omic nature,  as  well  as  the  price  of  hops.  If  one  man, 
or  a  number  of  men,  get  very  rich,  that  is,  rise  above 
the  line  in  wealth,  a  corresponding  volume  of  the  popu- 
lation must  go  below  the  line.  One  man  above,  if  he 
is  very  rich?  may  send  hundreds  below,  and  if  hops  go 
up  to  one  dollar  a  pound,  or  eight  times  their  true 
worth,  call  it  eight  points  above  the  line,  then  they  must 
sink  eight  points  below,  not,  in  one  year,  perhaps,  but 
in  a  reasonable  time.  It  is  a  law  of  nature,  and,  as  I 
said?  is  not  confined  to  hops.  We  see  this  law  at  work 
even  in  education.  In  countries  where  the  most  learned 
men  have  flourished  there  is  a  corresponding  number 
below  the  line. 

"The  tendency  of  all  natural  laws  is  to  equality,  and 
the  penalty  for  divergence  is  found  in  this  balancing-up 
process.  Two  years  ago  we  had  attained  a  culminating 
point  in  speculation,  extravagance  and  fictitious  values, 
and  began  levelling  up  by  sending  many  products,  as 
well  as  innumerable  firms  and  persons,  below  the  line. 
There  is  no  rest  anywhere,  and  blessed  little  common 
sense  in  this  struggle  for  existence.  The  broad  signs  of 
coming  disaster  are  not  learned  or  heeded.  We  are 
children  in  such  knowledge,  and  stupid  children  at 
that." 


176  NOTES  BY  A  STUDENT. 


CHAPTER    XXVI. 

MACHINE    TOOL    MAKERS FLEXIBLE   DRILLING   MACHINES- 
GRINDSTONE      FRAMES BALANCING      MANDRELS — 

AN   IDEA   IN    SALT    CELLARS. 


At  Seattle,  Tacoma  and  Portland  we 

went  into  various  machine  works2  and  as  this  is  a  field 
of  especial  interest  to  myself,  I  propose  to  fill  up  a 
section  of  the  note-book  with  what  was  seen,  and  the 
impressions  gained,  especially  the  latter.  It  is  a  tolerably 
risky  matter  to  criticise  shop  manipulation,  because 
there  are  various  ways  of  doing  almost  everything,  and 
the  best  way  is  often  a  matter  of  opinion,  determinable 
only  by  wide  experience  and  observation. 

The  most  unprogressive  among  all  kinds  of  machine 
work  is  machine  tool  making.  It  is  the  branch  to  which 
is  directed  the  highest  skill,  and  in  all  countries  is  the 
field  of  the  best  mechanics,  but  for  some  reason  tool 
makers  come  the  farthest  from  logical  conclusions  of  any 
class  engaged  in  the  machine  business.  There  is  about 
as  much  science  in  their  art  as  there  is  in  making  worm 
fences  in  Virginia.  They  don't  even  know,  and  will  not 
attempt  to  find  out,  the  strains  that  occur  in  metal  cut- 
ting, and  of  course  never  compute  sections  to  resist 
strains,  unless  it  be  in  a  press  or  like  machine.  A  lathe 
spindle  may  be  two,  three  or  four  inches  in  diameter, 
and  drilling  spindles  the  same.  This  last  mention  brings 
up  a  particular  point,  noticeable  in  nearly  all  drilling 
machines,  that  of  "torsional  elasticity." 

If  a  drilling  machine  is  employed  for  boring,  as  is 
common  in  this  Western  country,  its  operative  function 
is  not  much  different  from  the  head  stock  of  an  engine 


NOTES   BY  A   STUDENT.  .177 


lathe,  but  if  we  look  at  the  two  we  see  a  vast  difference. 
It  would  be  pretty  hard  for  a  tool  maker  to  explain  why 
he  should  not  put  the  same  gearing  on  a  drilling  spindle 
that  he  does  011  an  engine-lathe  spindle,  but  he  does 
nothing  of  the  kind,  in  this  country  at  least.  In  Eng- 
land the  rule  was  formerly,  and  may  be  yet,  to  use  the 
same  gearing  for  lathes  and  drilling  machines,  introduc- 
ing in  the  latter  a  pair  of  mitre  wheels  to  make  the 
angle.  This  was  a  very  good  rule,  and  saved  a  good  deal 
in  patterns  and  drawings,  produced  a  powerful  machine 
with  the  torsional  elasticity  confined  to  the  mitre  whee's 
and  projecting  spindle,  not  quite  as  stiff  as  a  lathe,  but 
near  it. 

Compare  this  with  the  back  gearing  on  a  second 
shaft,  two  to  four  feet  long,  and  in  the  case  of  radial 
drilling  machines  on  a  second  or  third  shaft,  sometimes 
with  as  much  as  ten  feet  of  light  shafting  between  the 
power  and  the  work.  A  radial  or  a  crane-drilling  r/  -\- 
chine  geared  in  this  manner  with  a  great  sole  plate,  a 
heavy  gib  bar  and  a  spindle  two  to  two  and  a  half  inches 
diameter  is  a  caricature  on  machine  design. 

If  one  asks  a  question  he  is  informed  that  the  drilling 
machine  is  a  "powerful  one,"  powerful  for  what?  To 
turn  drills?  For  that  is  nearly  the  sole  function  to  be 
performed.  "Drills  true"  we  are  told.  How  drills 
true?  A  machine  does  not  guide  its  drills.  The  drills 
guide  themselves,  and  if  there  is  a  deviation  the  ma- 
chine multiplies  the  error2and  makes  it  worse.  Of  course 
the  work  and  spindle  supports  must  be  so  sustained  as  to 
withstand  the  thrust  of  drilling,  that  is,  the  framing 
must  not  bend  or  yield,  but  as  to  lateral  stability  or 
guidance,  these  elements  or  functions  are  not  provided 
by  the  machine  at  all. 


178  NOTES   BY   A   STUDENT. 

Let  us  consider  a  drill  itself  as  an  implement.  It  has 
two  short  cutting  edges  balanced  across  its  point  or  axis. 
These  cutting  edges  are  guided  by  four  agencies:  the 
burrowing  point,  the  bearing  of  the  edges  themselves, 
the  lateral  fit  of  the  drill  in  the  hole  and  the  support 
of  the  outer  end  by  the  drilling  spindle. 

Xow  among  these  elements  of  "guidance"  what  does 
the  machine  itself  provide?  It  holds  the  outer  end  of 
the  drill  central  with  the  hole  "as  it  was  started/' 
presses  it  forward,  and  nothing  more.  If  the  drill  de- 
viates this  support  causes  more  deviation,  as  we  can 
see  in  rachet  drilling.  It  is  a  blind  following  of  the 
course.  There  is,  however,  another  machine  function, 
that  of  starting  drills  at  a  right  angle  to  the  plane  of 
the  table,  convenient,  and  hence  important,  but  with 
all  allowances  it  is  easy  to  see  that  a  "powerful  drilling 
machine"  is  an  idea,  not  a  fact,  except  as  to  force  of 
revolution. 

—This  divergence  to  drilling  has  used  up 
about  ten  times  the  intended  space,  and  we  pass  to  grind- 
stones. These  I  find  mostly  in  wooden  boxes  or  troughs, 
that  by  the  nature  of  the  material  must  be  made  of 
angular  section,  but  some  of  the  frames  are  made  of 
iron,  and  have  on  the  side  the  name  of  a  notable  firm 
of  tool  makers,  but  the  form  in  this  case  is  circular  or 
semi-circular  to  fit  around  the  stone.  What  for?  This 
shape  destroys  the  base,  and  this  must  either  be  ex- 
panded again,  producing  a  new  set  of  curves,  or  some 
kind  of  legs  must  be  screwed  on  to  get  a  footing.  The 
result  is  a  grotesque-looking  soup-bowl  affair  that  costs 
a  good  deal  for  pattern  making,  and  is  inconvenient  to 
mould,  handle,  and  awkward  in  use. 


NOTES   BY   A   STUDENT.  179 


The  ' '  box ' '  fits  around  the  stone,  so  that  if  a  tool  falls 
in  it  will  jam  the  stone,  and  cannot  be  got  out.  There 
is  no  room  to  catch  water  or  hold  sand,  except  a  small 
pool  in  the  center,  from  which  the  stone  picks  it  up,  and 
casts  it  out  over  the  grinder  or  on  the  floor.  Suppose 
that  on  the  contrary  these  iron  grindstone  boxes  were 
rectangular  in  form,  ran  straight  down  to  a  flange  that 
rests  on  the  floor,  the  corners  affording  a  space  to  hold 
water  and  slush.  Such  a  form  would  look  well,  and  be 
well ;  I  have  seen  them  and  tried  them. 

—I  noticed  the  men  grinding  on  the  ap- 
proaching side  of  the  stones,  and  asked  the  reason. 
"Takes  the  wire  edge  off"  was  the  answer.  That  settled 
it.  A  wire  edge  on  a  metal  cutting  tool  is  good.  Where 
I  learned  my  trade  we  oil  stoned  the  tools  after  grind- 
ing, which  it  is  true  took  off  the  "wire  enge,"  but  the 
object  was  something  else.  The  tool  was  smoothed  just 
at  the  edge  and  its  cutting  friction  reduced. 

The  reason  that  men  grind  in  front  of  a  stone  is  that 
there  is  less  pressure  to  apply,  but  this  is  a  poor  com- 
pensation for  being  slopped  all  over  with  dirty  water, 
and  running  the  risk  of  smashed  fingers  or  worse.  So 
it  has  always  been  in  machine  shops.  But  observe  a  pro- 
fessional grinder  and  see  if  he  works  on  the  front,  to 
so  call  it.  He  would  not  think  of  such  a  thing,  even  if 
he  were  grinding  machine  tools. 

—To  stop  fault  finding  for  a  time,  I  hap- 
pened today  on  a  little  matter  or  expedient  that  went 
far  to  direct  attention  from  tool  criticism,  and  some- 
thing so  good  that  I  felt  compelled  to  hurry  back  to  the 
hotel  and  submit  it  to  my  uncle.  It  is  common,  or  so 
far  as  I  know,  the  universal  rule  in  balancing  pulleys 
or  wheels  to  fit  them  on  a  mandrel  that  fills  the  bore,  and 


180  NOTES   BY   A   STUDENT. 


then  roll  the  mandrel  on  the  ways,  marking  the  high 
or  light  side.  These  mandrels  cost  a  good  deal  and  a 
good  many  are  required  for  holes  of  different  size.  The 
thing  I  found  was  a  man  balancing  pulleys  with  all 
kinds  of  bore  on  one  mandrel.  He  would  put  a  pulley 
of  four  inches  bore  on  a  two-inch  mandrel  or  piece  of 
shaft,  and  go  on  just  the  same.  The  rolling  action 
seemed  to  be  even  more  sensitive  when  the  mandrel  did 
not  fit  the  hole.  I  was  amazed,  also  disgusted.  Here 
is  my  uncle 's  idea  of  the  matter : 

"There  is  nothing  strange  in  this,  we  are  all  slaves  of 
habit,  with  a  limited  power  of  reasoning,  and  are  always 
blinded  by  familiarity.  No  one  reasoned  that  matter 
out.  Some  lazy  fellow,  or  some  one  in  a  hurry2  stumbled 
on  that  idea  when  trying  to  scamp  work.  I  can  see  how 
it  will  do  as  well  or  better  even,,  than  if  the  balancing 
shaft  fitted  the  bore,  now  that  you  mention  it,  but  never 
thought  of  it  before  in  forty  years'  experience.  It  is 
'leaving  off,'  that  is,  omitting  parts,  and  is  for  that 
reason  opposed  to  the  natural  idea  or  tendency  which 
is  to  add  on  something,  but  the  matter  is  not  done  yet. 
You  have  it  down  in  your  note-book,  in  your  head  and 
in  mine,  but  there  are  by  the  census  report  about  sixty 
million,  nine  hundred  thousand,  nine  hundred  and  nine- 
ty-seven people  left  to  learn  it.  How  long  do  you  think 
it  will  take  for  this  to  go  around  ?  Go  back  to  that  shop 
in  five  years  from  now,  and  you  will  perhaps  find  them 
carefully  turning  up  special  mandrels  to  fit  the  bore 
of  each  pulley  or  wheel  to  be  balanced.  It  may  require 
a  pick  to  get  a  joke  into  a  Scotchman's  head,  but  it 
requires  a  pile  driver  to  penetrate  the  crust  of  custom. 

"Please  hand  me  that  salt  cellar?  I  want  to  use  it 
for  an  illustration.  It  is  a  shaking  one,  and  inside  is  a 


NOTES   BY  A   STUDENT.  181 


small  battering  ram  to  pulverize  and  loosen  the  salt, 
but  even  with  that  you  cannot  shake  out  any.  It  is  caked 
hard,  and  from  here  to  New  York  you  will  not  find  one 
much  better.  Salt  absorbs  moisture,  and  melts  to  the 
extent  of  the  particles  adhering  together,  "packing" 
we  call  it.  Now  what  is  the  logical  preventative  for  this  ? 
Obviously  some  substance  to  take  up  the  moisture,  starch 
for  example.  Put  twenty  per  cent  of  starch  in  the  salt, 
and  it  will  flow  like  sand  or  gunpowder  in  all  weathers. 
Do  you  think  that  is  new?  Not  by  any  means,  every 
fool  should  know  this  much,  and  hundreds,  perhaps 
thousands,  have  been  informed  of  it,  but  it  remains  in 
the  occult  field  of  the  unknowable  for  all  the  rest.  Now 
you  can  discern  what  is  to  become  of  your  balancing 
mandrel  problem." 

This  was  hard,  this  ruthless  theory  of  my  uncle,  but 
it  is  true,  and  brings  to  mind  the  Hero  engine  of  300 
B.  C.j  just  now  in  a  modified  form  coming  to  the  front 
as  a  motive  machine,  but  there  are  exceptions,  not  in  the 
useful  arts  unhappily.  If  the  beaux  on  the  boulevard 
in  Paris  put  on  square-toed  boots,  they  will  appear  in 
Halifax  and  Sitka  by  course  of  mail.  If  hats  have  an 
inch  added  to  their  brim  diameter,  or  as  much  taken 
off,  the  change  goes  directly  around  the  world,  and  all 
imitate  the  fashion.  It  is  only  useful  things  that  travel 
so  slow. 

— I  wonder  what  the  reason  may  be  why 
line  shafting  all  over  this  country,  so  far  as  we  have 
seen,  is  coupled  with  keyed-en  flanges,  not  even  clamp 
couplings.  I  brought  up  the  subject  once  or  twice,  and 
in  answer  to  inquiry  brought  out  a  discussion  of  the 
merits,  cost,  and  holding  power  of  compression  and 
flange  couplings,  but  no  hint  whatever  that  would  show 


182  NOTES  BY   A   STUDENT. 

that  people  about  here  know  what  compression  or  clamp 
couplings  ' '  are  for. ' '  This  is  just  a  little  strange,  when 
one  finds,  on  the  other  hand,  any  number  of  ingenious 
expedients  invented  and  applied  to  all  kinds  of  pur- 
poses. No  one2  however,  seems  to  have  discovered  that 
clamp  couplings  convert  the  making  of  line  shafting 
to  a  "manufacture,"  and  this  is  the  key  to  any  system 
of  cheap  production;  but  then,  organized  manufacture 
of  any  kind  is  in  its  germ  state  here,  and  must  be  for 
some  time  to  come.  There  is  no  market  to  permit  dupli- 
cation, and  here  is  the  greatest  impediment  to  local  pro- 
duction. I  am  expecting  to  find  other  impediments  be- 
fore we  get  to  San  Diego,  or  the  Mexican  line,  but  there 
is  one  quality  that  goes  far  to  compensate  for  organized 
industry,  and  that  is  a  restless  vigor  and  boldness  that 
makes  one  man  count  for  two  in  some  other  parts  of 
this  country. 


CHAPTER    XXVII. 

BRAHMANISM A        HIGH        COUNTRY SOMETHING       ABOUT 

MIRACLES HYPNOTISM A    NOVEL    TYPE    OF    STEAM- 
BOATS  IMPROVING    A    RIVER. 


At  the  hotel  in  Tacoma  we  found  a  num- 
ber of  foreigners,  mostly  Englishmen,  travelers  "taking 
in ' '  and  doing  the  country,  as  one  of  them  said.  Among 
others  a  sedate-looking  man  that  his  companions  called 
"Brahma,"  a  name  bestowed  as  we  learned  because  of 
his  belief  in  the  faith  of  that  name.  To  myself,  no  doubt 
to  most  other  people,  this  seemed  a  most  miraculous 
and  heathenish  idea^  and  I  mentioned  as  much  to  my 
uncle.  It  was  the  greatest  mistake  I  ever  made.  My 


NOTES  BY  A  STUDENT.  183 

uncle  I  knew  had  been  in  India,  and  noted  among  other 
things  the  faith  of  the  people  there,  at  least  he  notes 
everything,  and  as  religion  is  the  most  prominent  feature 
of  social  life  in  India  I  might  have  been  more  cautious, 
and  first  learned  his  views  of  the  Brahma  matter. 

"A  Brahma!"  said  he,  "what  of  that?  What  do  you 
and  the  rest  who  are  quizzing  this  man  know  of  Braman- 
ism?  When  Egypt  was  young,  a  thousand  years  before 
Greece  and  Rome,  these  people  had  progressed  farther 
in  the  study  of  the  human  mind  and  being  than  any 
other  people  have  to  this  day.  The  center  of  Brahman 
faith  is  in  Thibet,  where  no  one  goes,  and  no  one  can 
go,  to  stay  at  least.  It  lies  14,000  feet  above  the  sea, 
and  demands  physical  and  anatomical  conditions  that 
came  of  evolution,  lungs  to  hold  twice  as  much  air  for 
one  thing.  A  few  people,  perhaps  not  a  dozen  in  all,  of 
our  race  have  penetrated  this  country,  and  not  one  per- 
son in  a  million  of  them  knows  what  Brahmanism  means. 

"As  I  said,  five  thousand  years  ago  Hindoo  philoso- 
phers had  progressed  farther  in  fundamental  knowledge 
than  we  have  to-day.  Their  country  was  covered  with 
fine  cities^  canals,  reservoirs,  terraced  gardens,  temples 
and  palaces,  so  graceful  and  beautiful  that  the  best  we 
can  do  now  is  to  make  imitations  of  them.  They  had 
little  scientific  knowledge,  and  so  much  greater  becomes 
their  achievements,  especially  as  all  these  things  were 
done  without  lying,  cheating,  murder  and  other  con- 
comitants of  our  modern  civilization,  at  least  there  is 
no  record  or  tradition  of  such  vices. 

"I  have  seen  the  mango  seed  planted  in  India,  and 
in  thirty  minutes  grow  to  a  tree  before  our  eyes.  Leger- 
demain you  call  it.  I  have  seen  it2  or  thought  I  saw  it. 
What  does  it  mean?  A  power  over  the  human  mind 


184  NOTES  BY  A  STUDENT. 

of  which  we  have  no  knowledge  except  a  mere  fringe  we 
call  hypnotism,  and  that  a  mystery.  The  miracle  was 
not  performed  for  money,  but  for  the  same  reasons  that 
Christ  performed  his  miracles,  and  was  followed  by  a 
sermon  that  lifted  the  human  mind  far  above  the  plane 
fixed  by  our  Western  sciences. 

"I  am  not  of  a  credulous  nature,  and  believe  in  the 
immutability  of  physical  laws,  as  any  one  dealing  with 
modern  science  and  mechanics  must  do,  otherwise  be  con- 
sidered a  fool,  but  when  it  comes  to  the  laws  that  govern 
the  human  mind,  and  the  relations  that  life  bears  to 
matter,  we  must  go  to  the  Brahman  to  learn. 

"The  man  who  planted  the  mango  tree  had  been  do- 
ing that  very  same  thing  his  whole  life,  so  had  his 
father  and  grandfather  before  him,  so  had  his  pro- 
genitors for  thousands  of  years  before.  The  mango 
tree  is  an  inconsequential  matter,  but  the  power  that 
made  it  grow,  blossom,  bear  fruit,  wither  and  disappear 
in  sixty  minutes,  that  is  the  point.  The  man  had  no 
clothing  to  exceed  a  dime  in  value;  his  food,  a  cup  of 
rice,  was  not  worth  two  cents,  and  these  things  were 
given  to  him.  His  business  was  to  study  the  human 
mind,  and  this  he  had  done  to  some  purpose. 

"Another  man  would  cast  a  coil  of  rope  upward  in 
the  air,  where  it  would  remain  rigid;  then  he  would 
climb  up  the  rope.  Don't  laugh  at  this.  Thousands  of 
people  have  seen  the  same  thing,  or  thought  they  did. 
There  was  no  stage  or  stage  apparatus,  no  gas  light,  or 
anything  to  promote  deception.  All  was  done  in  the 
open  air,  not  for  pay,  as  I  before  said,  but  as  an  experi- 
ment on  the  human  perceptions,  and  now  I  come  to  the 
point.  A  people  who  have  thus  studied  the  human 


NOTES  BY  A  STUDENT.  185 

mind  and  soul  of  man  are  very  apt  to  attain  to  a  high 
religion  and  system  of  morals. 

''No  one  of  you  who  are  laughing  at  our  friend  knows 
what  the  term  Brahma  means.  Neither  do  I.  I  am  not 
advanced  enough  in  knowledge  and  the  powers  of  per- 
ception to  understand  it,  but  one  thing  I  can  explain,  it 
does  not  mean  a  "thing,"  a  creed  or  even  a  condition 
that  can  be  expressed  in  the  terms  of  our  language  and 
modes  of  thought. 

"Our  friend  is  not  a  Brahman,  he  cannot  be.  He  has 
only  attained  a  decent  respect  for  a  wisdom  of  which 
he  is  conscious.  He  has  no  doubt  seen  jugglers  in  the 
streets  of  Benares.  He  may  have  been  on  the  plains  of 
Thibet,  or  even  at  Thibet,  but  let  this  be  as  it  may  I  am 
sure  that  his  reverence  for  Hindoo  wisdom  is  based  on 
some  reason  that  does  honor  to  his  judgment  and  the 
better  feelings  of  his  nature." 

—This  extraordinary  sermon,  here  noted 
down  imperfectly,  was  a  revelation  to  me,  and  I  lost  no 
time  in  some  further  inquiry  and  reading  on  the  subject 
of  Hindoo  faith,  and  conclude  that  if  instead  of  tech- 
nology and  mechanics  I  had  devoted  as  many  years  to 
mental  philosophy  I  might  be  in  a  position  to  under- 
stand something  of  human  desires,  passions,  senses  and 
spiritual  life  as  taught  in  Eastern  philosopy,  as  it  is  I 
give  it  up. 

As  to  Hindoo  magic,  as  we  term  it,  every  one  has  read 
of  that,  and  as  a  reality  have  scoffed  at  it,  properly  so, 
because  it  will  not  square  with  the  laws  of  gravity  and 
other  fixed  principles  that  no  one  can  doubt,  but  we 
never  think  of  the  minds  and  imagination  of  those  who 
are  looking  on. 


186  NOTES  BY  A  STUDENT. 

A  German  traveler,  Dr.  Hensoldt,  has  recently  made 
his  way  into  Thibet  and  written  of  esoteric  science  there 
in  a  way  to  disturb  one's  mind,  but  this  digression, 
covering  many  pages  in  these  notes,  has  gone  far 
enough,  and  is  excusable  only  on  the  grounds  that  many 
scientific  men  of  our  day  have  taken  up  this  subject  of 
occult  science  in  the  East,  and  we  may  soon  look  for 
some  rational,  or  at  least  possible,  explanation  of  the 
mango  trees  and  rigid  ropes. 

—Portland,  Oregon,  is  on  the  Willamette 
River,  near  its  mouth?  nine  miles  below  where  this  river 
tumbles  over  a  considerable  cliff.  We  found  here  a 
good  many  interesting  things,  a  strange  mixture  of  the 
head  and  tail,  so  to  speak,  of  industrial  art.  Among  the 
head  things  were  stern-wheel  steamboats,  that  had  some 
approximation  to  the  lines  and  make-up  of  theoretical 
marine  craft,  especially  below  the  water-line,  and  the 
fact  caused  both  myself  and  my  uncle  a  good  deal  of 
concern.  In  the  first  place  the  wheels  were  much 
smaller  in  diameter  than  on  our  Western  rivers  in  the 
Mississippi  Valley,  not  more  than  two-thirds  as  large,  a 
fact  that  no  one  seemed  to  be  aware  of,  and  which  is  yet 
unexplained. 

Going  on  board  one  of  these  steamers  we  found 
geared  to  one  of  these  small  wheels  a  pair  of  engines 
that  by  inference  should  have  spun  it  around  regard- 
less of  the  water  at  a  rate  equal  to  a  wind-wheel  in  a 
gale,  but  nothing  of  the  kind  took  place.  We  made  a 
short  journey  in  that  same  boat?  up  to  the  Cascades, 
about  six  hours'  run,  and  the  little  wheel  hung  to  the 
water  like  the  rack  pinion  under  a  mountain  locomotive, 
and  there  was  no  slip. 


NOTES  BY  A  STUDENT.  187 

The  engineer  said  it  was  the  form  of  the  hull  that 
had  a  clean  "run"  and  left  solid  water  at  the  stern  for 
the  wheel  to  work  in,  which  seemed  a  contradiction^  be- 
cause a  bluff  flat-bottomed  barge,  like  on  the  Missis- 
sippi hulls.,  leaves  a  following  wake,  dragged  against 
the  wheel,  so  it  seems  at  least,  but  this  will  not  do,  be- 
cause here  is  ocular  proof  of  the  contrary,  and  the  un- 
disturbed water  theory  must  stand  for  the  present. 

The  engines  were  the  best  I  had  ever  seen  on  a 
"wheel  barrow"  steamer,  were  well  managed  and  push- 
ing along:  a  boat  to  carry  800  tons  of  freight,  eighteen 
miles  an  hour,  with  a  cord  of  wood  for  fuel  in  that  dis- 
tance. One  boiler,  a  huge  firebox  one,  set  amidships. 
The  whole  thing  was  a  revelation  in  stern-wheel  boats, 
and  deserves  a  dozen  pages  here  if  I  knew  how  to  write 
them. 

The  Cascades  are  well  named,  and  make  a  complete 
bar  to  navigation.  The  Government  in  a  kind  of 
desultory  way  is  making  sluices  at  the  head  of  the 
rapids,  and  will  be  for  many  years  to  come,*  but  how 
a  boat  is  to  get  to  these  sluices  or  locks  up  over  half  a 
mile  of  rapids,  or  go  down  over  them,  is  a  problem  in 
"occult  science."  There  will  be  a  canal,  no  doubt,  but 
there  will  be  time  enough  to  think  of  this  in  the  remote 
future. 

In  a  government  of  and  for  railways,  the  improve- 
ment of  waterways  is  a  kind  of  sham  set  up  to  catch 
opinions  and  votes.  It  is  like  dredging  out  the  channel 
to  Galveston  harbor,  and  letting  out  there  the  products 
of  the  Southwest  that  are  now  carried  by  railways  to 
Eastern  ports.  It  is  not  likely  that  any  one  now  living 


*This  work  was  finished  about  three  years  later. 


188  NOTES  BY  A  STUDENT. 

will  see  a  channel  to  admit  ocean  steamers  to  Galveston, 
and  may  never  see  steamboats  going  up  over  the  Cas- 
cades and  Dalles.  The  latter  are  other  rapids  farther 
up.  This  would  be  direct  interference  with  railway  in- 
terests, and  not  to  be  tolerated.  This  idea  is  my  own. 


CHAPTER    XXVIII. 

POPULATION     WANTED THE     LEAD-PIPE     CINCH PIONEER- 
ING  A  NEW-MADE  COUNTRY A  MAN  FROM  BOLIVAR. 


— Before  going  farther  down  the  Pacific 
Coast  one  may  observe  here  fully  the  nature  and  trend 
of  what  we  may  call  the  local  civilization,  not  that  this 
term  applies  to  what  is  meant,  but  there  is  no  other  at 
hand.  The  keynote  is  found  in  two  things — immigra- 
tion and  imitation. 

There  is  continual  effort  to  imitate  the  Eastern  States 
in  a  country  where  climate,  products  and  other  natural 
conditions  are  different.  There  is,  of  course,  a  good 
deal  that  is  original,  but  the  latter  is  forced  and  not 
induced.  This  is  natural,  from  the  maintenance  of 
highways  and  schools  down  to  the  hitch  of  a  harness, 
but  the  immigration  matter  is  not  so  easily  accounted 
for. 

In  San  Francisco  we  are  informed  there  are  regular 
societies  to  promote  immigration,  and  one  can  hardly 
run  over  a  serial  publication  of  any  kind  here  without 
finding  something  about  "more  people  on  the  Coast." 
This  may  be  a  desirable  thing,  but  I  think  not.  People 
have  come  here  much  too  fast  as  it  is,  long  before  tnere 
were  means  to  employ,  regulate  and  govern  them,  and 
while  much  of  the  required  machinery  of  population 


NOTES  BY  A   STUDENT.  189 


was  wanting.  This  remark  need  not,  however,  be  con- 
fined to  the  Pacific  Coast.  It  is  common  all  over  the 
country,  and  one  may  ask  for  some  logical  explanation 
without  ever  receiving  anything  of  the  kind. 

Population  is  not  strength,  unless  made  up  of  "solid 
men. ' '  The  imported  thousands  that  come  from  Europe 
and  Asia,  with  other  thousands  that  are  bred  up  to 
ideas  engendered  by  this  immigration,  in  politics  for 
example,  are  no  gain  to  a  people,  and  I  believe  that  if 
the  population  of  the  United  States  had  not  increased 
a  single  soul  in  twenty-five  years  past  the  country 
would  be  in  a  much  better  condition  than  it  now  is.  As 
this  has  no  hope  of  proof  it  is  given  for  what  it  is  worth 
as  an  opinion,  an  honest  one  at  that,  but  the  query  is, 
where  did  this  craze  for  population  come  from,  and 
what  is  its  incentive? 

With  this  cry  for  people  has  come  about  circumstances 
that  repel  nearly  all  except  the  dependent  classes.  One 
result  is  the  difficulty  and  almost  impossibility  of 
operating  with  small  capital,  or  by  individual  effort, 
It  takes  a  "company"  to  do  anything,  and  the  company 
must  be  rid  of  competition  if  possible.  A  droll  kind  of 
a  man  we  met  as  a  fellow-traveler  had  studied  these  cir- 
cumstances, or  rather  had  discovered  them.  Here  are 
some  of  his  remarks  as  near  as  they  can  be  remembered : 
— "People  about  here  when  they  do  busi- 
ness want  a  'lead-pipe  cinch'  on  what  they  are  about, 
and  they  get  it,  not  by  monopoly  always,  but  in  another 
way.  When  a  poor  man,  or  any  one  man,  starts  a  busi- 
ness he  must  put  up  the  capital,  and  must  meet  the  as- 
sessor when  he  comes  around.  He  may  make  ten  per 
cent,  a  year,  perhaps  more,  and  a  company  must  do  the 
same,  but  does  the  company  put  up  capital  ?  not  much ; 


190  NOTES  BY  A  STUDENT. 

they  just  figure  it  out.  What  money  they  have  is  bor- 
rowed on  the  bond  dodge.  The  shares  represent  noth- 
ing, or  a  good  deal  Iess2  except  to  swell  the  investment 
account.  This  is  financiering,  and  to  divide  ten  per 
cent,  on  the  watered  stock  fifty  per  cent,  must  be 
earned  on  the  real  capital,  hence  there  must  be  a  'cinch' 
somewhere,  some  kind  of  charter,  privilege  or  right, 
which  one  man  cannot  command.  The  small  man  must 
be  kept  out  of  the  way,  and  he  is  smashed  somehow, 
hence  our  enterprises  are  large,  large  in  many  ways, 
and  a  poor  man  has  only  the  privilege  of  wages,  and  not 
that  in  many  cases. ' ' 

The  "lead-pipe  cinch"  was  a  curious  but  expressive 
phrase,  and  describes  perhaps  too  strong  an  idea  of 
business,  that  has  grown  out  of  the  speculative  era  here, 
and  is  the  bane  of  this  country,  as  well  as  a  good  deal 
of  the  Eastern  part.  It  was  well  illustrated  by  a  stove- 
maker  we  called  on: 

"I  did  pretty  well,"  said  he,  "until  they  scooped  me 
with  capital.  I  was  in  the  way,  and  they  just  shelved 
me.  All  I  own  here  is  my  clothes.  The  store  across 
the  way  has  my  foundry.  Money  is  dear  here  and  I 
did  not  have  much  capital,  so  could  not  sell  on  credit, 
but  the  merchants  use  credit  where  money  is  plenty  and 
cheap.  A  stove  foundry  in  Troy,  New  York,  can  borrow 
money  at  half  what  I  can.  Their  agents  here  take 
farmers'  notes  for  twelve  months  for  stoves,  and  send 
the  notes  East  as  collateral,  or  sell  as  an  investment. 
They  soon  scooped  me." 

I  submitted  the  droll  man's  notes  to  my  uncle,  who 
I  found  had  been  already  carefully  observing  the  same 
matter.  "Tech?"  said  he,  "that  notebook  of  yours  is 
of  no  use  in  the  present  case.  You  might  as  well  try 


NOTES  BY  A  STUDENT.  191 

to  dock  a  ship  in  a  wash  tub.  It  will  require  some 
reams  of  paper  to  deal  with  this  matter.  You  have 
struck  the  gr<-at  economic  problem  of  our  time,  coming 
like  an  avalanche,  and  you  can  only  look  and  wait  to 
see  what  turns  up  next. 

"The  'lead-pipe  cinch'  is  no  myth.  It  is  a  fact,  and 
has  another  name,  invented  by  Mr.  Gladstone,  who  calls 
it  an  'inequality  of  human  conditions.'  Where  popula- 
tion is  fixed2  or  nearly  so,  and  where  the  opportunities 
of  nature  are  watched  and  held  in  some  equitable  way, 
the  inequality  is  not  so  marked,  but  as  you  go  toward  the 
edge,  where  things  are  new,  prices  unfixed,  and  the 
opportunities  of  nature  are  exposed  to  personal  or  cor- 
porate conquest,  there  you  will  see  the  'lead-pipe  cinch,' 
as  your  friend  called  it,  also  will  find  the  struggle  for 
existence  intensified.  Markets  are  narrow,  population 
not  assimilated,  the  sentiment  of  sympathy  is  weak,  and 
people  act  like  a  multitude  floundering  in  the  water, 
each  one  trying  to  keep  afloat  by  pushing  the  next  man 
under.  Laws  are  weak,  or  not  enforced,  and  the  race  is 
exemplified  by  the  '  devil  take  the  hindmost. ' 

* '  Better  end  this  topic  right  where  it  is  in  your  notes, 
and  make  a  cut-off  line:  'If  you  want  to  be  contented, 
fairly  treated  and  happy,  never  live  where  the  popula- 
tion of  a  country  is  rapidly  increasing;  keep  to  where 
there  are  sidewalks^  gaslights,  good  roads  and  a  fixed 
population,  and  let  others  do  the  pioneering  business. 
They  are  fond  of  it?  crazy  for  it  indeed,  and  there  is  no 
lack  of  recruits.'  : 

I  took  his  advice  in  so  far  as  the  present,  but  hope  to 
learn  more  of  this  lead-pipe  cinch  matter  before  we  get 
through.  This  "inequality  of  human  conditions"  is  a 
striking  name  and  theme. 


192  NOTES  BY  A  STUDENT. 


—The  making  of  railways  up  and  down 
this  coast  calls  for  fortitude,  and  might  well  excuse  a 
little  water  in  the  shares.  As,  however,  any  ideas  set 
down  here  belong  to  my  uncle,  it  is  but  fair  to  transcribe 
his  remarks  on  the  subject. 

"This  country,"  said  he,  "is  wholly  unlike  the  At- 
lantic Coast.  That  is  flattened  out,  settled  down,  and 
was  finished  thousands  of  years  before  this  job  began. 
It  is  all  volcanic  here  and  to  the  south,  increasing  as 
we  go  on,  that  is,  more  recent,  and  the  whole  structure 
is  as  if  it  had  been  shook  up  when  hot  and  set  down 
to  cool.  You  don't  see  much  surface  evidence  here  in 
Oregon.  It  is  a  little  older,  but  wait  until  you  get  to 
the  Bay  of  San  Francisco  and  thereabout,  and  you  may 
run  through  miles  of  lava  that  has  not  been  disinte- 
grated enough  to  form  a  skin  of  soil.  Some  places  you 
will  imagine  yourself  passing  over  an  old  furnace  dump. 
There  is  scoria,  puma  and  a  lot  of  other  matter  with 
Latin  names  that  we  common  people  call  slag  when  it 
conies  from  a  furnace.  There  are  whole  counties  of  it 
in  California,  some  of  them  not  very  well  settled  yet, 
because  it  is  not  long  since  some  of  these  volcanic  cen- 
ters were  shaken  out  of  semblance. 

"Up  here  there  is  a  good  deep  surface  strata,  as  the 
dense  timber  growth  proves,  but  pretty  soon  you  will 
see  no  more  of  this  dense  timber  growth,  except  in 
valleys  where  the  detritus  has  made  depth  enough.  To 
build  a  railway  here  is  a  job,  of  course,  and  there  is  not 
only  the  physical  impediments  to  construction,  but  the 
useful  surface  or  area  to  be  served  is  limited  in  the 
same  proportion. 

"They  do  not  need  railways  up  and  down  this  coast 
in  such  places  as  from  San  Francisco  to  Portland  and 


NOTES  BY  A  STUDENT.  193 

Puget  Sound.  Nothing  but  an  inadequate  and  law- 
harassed  sea  service  permitted  it.  There  is  no  finer 
chance  in  the  world  for  a  coast  steamer  service  that 
railways  could  not  touch,  but  it  does  not  exist.  The 
v  3ssels  are  just  large  enough  to  induce  seasickness, 
j  nd  long  enough  at  sea  to  make  it  aggravating.  A 
steamer  should  be  at  sea  only  thirty  hours  or  so  between 
Portland  and  San  Francisco,  and  if  of  the  first  class, 
and  large  enough,  very  few  would  patronize  a  railway 
train  that  is  nearly  as  long  on  the  way. 

"Watch  these  valleys,  or,  what  is  better,  look  at  your 
maps,  and  you  will  see  that  instead  of  leading  to  the 
ocean  the  common  course  is  parallel  to  the  coast,  another 
sequence  of  volcanic  architecture.  Look  at  the  great 
valley  of  California,  stretching  400  miles  parallel  to  the 
coast,  the  high  ridges,  with  a  lava  cap  hundreds  of  feet 
thick  on  top,  and  buried  stream  beds  beneath  where 
the  miners  delve  and  tunnel  for  gold.  It  is  a  queer 
country  geologically,  and  in  a  good  many  other  re- 
spects. ' ' 

—We  went  down  the  coast  by  train,  not 
by  choice  as  a  means  of  travel,  but  to  see  the  country, 
and  were  much  interested  in  various  things  on  the  route, 
especially  when  we  passed  Shasta,  a  snow-capped  moun- 
tain, and  descended  into  the  valley  of  the  Sacramento 
River. 

The  transition  from  the  fir  belt,  just  below  the  snow, 
down  to  a  tropical  country  in  a  few  hours'  run  was 
amazing.  As,  however,  this  change  is  due  less  to  altitude 
than  the  effect  of  winds  and  sea  influences,  the  two 
things  must  be  kept  in  mind.  Get  behind  a  mountain 
here?  and  you  can  plant  figs  and  oranges.  Go  on  the 
other  side  and  none  of  this.  Twisted  trees  and  chapar- 


194  NOTES   BY  A   STUDENT. 

ral,  cold  too,  and  dried  out  in  summer.  I  have  seen 
somewhere  a  weather  table  made  up  from  observations 
under  the  lee  of  a  mountain  2,500  feet  high,  only  ten 
miles  from  San  Francisco  and  five  miles  from  the  sea, 
that  corresponds  to  climate  500  miles  south  of  there. 
The  rainfall  was  double  on  the  lee  side  of  the  mountain. 

The  Sacramento  River  occupies  or  runs 

through  a  wide  valley,  draining  hundreds  of  square 
miles  of  alluvial  lands  fertile  in  a  high  degree,  and  so 
dear  in  price  we  are  informed  that  when  bought  at  this 
day  will  not  return  taxes  and  interest,  not  an  unusual 
matter  here,  however,  in  investments,  because  the  real 
facts  of  production  are  too  irregular  to  be  estimated. 
People  proceed  on  the  assumption  of  maximum  crops 
and  high  prices. 

Wheat,  the  principal  product,  is  measured  by  the 
cental  of  100  pounds,  which  is  sensible.  In  ten  years 
its  value  has  gone  down  from  1.75  to  1  cent  a  pound, 
or  60  per  cent.  In  this  disappeared  all  the  profit,  and 
with  it  some  of  the  cost  of  production,  as  it  is  figured 
or  as  it  really  is  here.  Wheat  from  being  a  surplus 
product  of  farmers  has  become  here  and  elsewhere  in 
large  wheat-growing  districts  a  "manufacture/'  con- 
ducted with  and  having  all  the  characteristics  of  "com- 
pany" operation,  consequently  without  that  element 
that  founds  and  cements  a  community  of  farmers'' 
homes  and  villages.  In  this  matter  we  met  with  what 
is  the  great  and  controlling  characteristic  of  this  portion 
of  the  Pacific  Coast,  and  discovered  it  at  first  from  a 
fellow-passenger  who  lives  in  a  Sacramento  Valley  vil- 
lage. I  have  his  words  set  down  very  nearly  as  deliv- 
ered, except  the  name  of  the  town,  which  is  changed. 


NOTES  BY   A   STUDENT.  195 

"I  live  in  Bolivar,  or  what  was  Bolivar,  in  the  valley. 
It  was  a  kind  of  mixed  town,  a  little  farming,  garden- 
ing, stock  raising,  blacksmithing,  wagon  and  harness 
making,  cooper  shops,  shoe  making  and  the  like.  A 
main  road  from  the  foothill  mines  passed  through  the 
town,  and  the  tavern  did  a  great  business.  Every  man 
was  at  work.  There  was  plenty  to  eat  and  wear;  money 
too;  churches,  school  and  all  this,  but  it  ended.  Rich 
men  we  had  never  seen  got  the  land  all  around  and  made 
it  into  great  farms.  The  railway  built  a  branch  through 
our  main  street.  People  came  from  the  City,  and  set 
up  two  great  stores,  one  for  the  men  and  one  for  the 
women. 

"A  ramshackle  train  carrying  people,  merchandise 
and  cattle  came  once  a  day  crawling  through,  and 
charged  ten  cents  a  mile  to  travel  in  a  box  car,  and  for 
freight  more  than  the  wagons  got  twenty  years  ago. 
The  shoemaker,  blacksmith,  cooper,  and  carpenter  shut 
up  their  shops.  Rich  men's  sons  from  the  large  farms 
make  the  town  their  evening  resort.  Bars,  beer  halls, 
game  houses  and  the  like  sprang  up,  and  Bolivar  is  the 
wretchedest  place  you  can  find.  Not  one  man  in  ten 
works.  There  is  nothing  to  do  but  to  loaf  around.  No 
one  builds  a  house2  no  one  has  any  money,  and  what  is 
wanting  is  a  big  fire,  and  then  a  wheat  field  on  the 
ground  where  Bolivar  stands. ' ' 

This  was  undoubtedly  what  is  called  here  a  mining 
town.  They  rise  and  fall  with  the  mines. 

—We  are  at  the  metropolis  of  the  Pacific 
Coast,  a  veritable  city  "set  on  hills,"  not  high  ones, 
but  enough  for  drainage  and  to  furnish  an  incentive 
to  invent  cable  railways,  that  widely  spread  over  the 
world  from  here. 


196  NOTES  BY  A  STUDENT. 


One  of  these  hills  near  amidships,  offered  a  view  over 
nearly  all,  but  the  best  view  of  the  physical  environ- 
ments of  San  Francisco  is  obtained  from  an  eminence 
700  feet  high  on  the  Marin  County  shore,  north  of -the 
Golden  Gate,  or  harbor  entrance  that  bears  this  auri- 
ferous name. 

There  is  no  city  on  the  American  continent  that 
presents  such  a  problem  as  this  one.  Nature  by  vari- 
ous means  has  made  it  the  metropolis  and  more  than 
this,  the  "entrepot"  for  a  shore  1,200  miles  long,  and 
has  obligingly  neglected  to  indent  the  coast  or  other- 
wise form  a  harbor  capable  of  great  commerce  through- 
out all  this  distance,  except  at  San  Francisco ;  but  here 
has  created  an  inland  sea  with  a  coast  line  500  miles 
long,  surrounded  by  capes,  channels,  creeks  and  all  kinds 
of  shelter  and  other  provisions  down  to  fresh  water  in 
the  northeast  portion  that  stops  the  teredo  from  eating 
up,  or  down,  the  wharfs. 

I  think  it  was  the  Hon.  William  Seward  who  once 
made  a  journey  up  along  this  coast  and  prophesied  that 
it  would  some  time  contain  a  mass  of  people,  wealth 
and  activity,  outrivalling  the  eastern  side  of  the  United 
States. 

There  is  much  to  warrant  such  a  prediction.  I  might 
fill  here  a  dozen  pages  with  reasons  for  such  an  assump- 
tion, just  as  good  prophecy  as  any  one  can  make  and 
the  subject  would  be  new,  because  the  future  of  this 
coast,  and  especially  of  San  Francisco,  does  not  seem 
to  concern  the  present  generation  even  hereabout. 

The  city  by  a  little  sea  trade,  a  little  zone  of  internal 
traffic,  mining  interests,  some  manufacturing  and  en- 
gineering work,  has  struggled  up  in  forty  years  to  about 
320,000  population.  Mr.  Potter's  census  of  1890  not 


NOTES  BY  A   STUDENT.  197 

being  ready  yet  and  of  little  use  when  it  is  ready,  I  guess 
at  this  estimate.* 

This  city  is  the  western  door  of  the  United  States 
through  which  by  all  natural  and  trade  laws  must  some- 
time flow  outward  and  inward,  the  main  foreign  com- 
merce of  the  United  States.  In  support  of  this  idea  I 
will  turn  back  in  my  note-book  to  a  little  screed  on  this 
subject,  by  my  uncle,  delivered  in  a  different  connec- 
tion, concerning  foreign  trading. 

Said  he:  "We  cannot  trade  to  Europe  except  in 
natural  products  that  grow  here  and  will  not  grow 
there,  or  for  which  there  is  no  room  there.  People  of 
like  power  and  similar  civilization  have  no  true  basis  for 
trade.  Skill  is  portable,  so  is  knowledge  of  all  kinds  of 
industry.  To  send  our  skilled  products  to  Europe  is 
like  sending  coals  to  Newcastle.  The  natural  markets 
of  San  Francisco  lie  in  South  and  Central  America  and 
in  Asia.  The  trade  of  India  for  two  thousand  years 
proved  the  truth  of  this.  Venice,  Rome,  Constantinople, 
London,  Paris  and  Vienna  were  all  built  up  by  the 
trade  of  India.  It  was  a  golden  stream  that  flowed  in 
different  directions  in  different  ages,  directed  by  wars 
and  the  circumstances  of  trade.  Europe  does  not  want 
anything  from  here  except  food,  crude  minerals?  or  other 
natural  products,  with  now  and  then  an  invention  or 
product  of  invention  that  is  imitated  there  in  a  short 
time. ' ' 

This  applies  to  our  present  subject  of  San  Francisco. 
The  people  here  do  not  realize  or  comprehend  what  they 
have  in  keeping,  or  their  future  destiny.  They  are 
mostly  people  who  have  come  out  from  "home"  in  the 


*Written  in  1898. 


198  NOTES   BY   A   STUDENT. 

Eastern  States,  turn  their  backs  to  the  ocean  and  look 
back  inland  for  letters  and  mercantile  supplies  bought 
from  their  old  friends.  There  is  no  grasp  of  the  real 
situation.  It  is  no  wonder  that  energy  and  almost  hope 
have  been  drubbed  out  of  them  by  various  paternal 
laws,  State  and  Federal,  that  promote  the  idea  of  a 
"town  on  the  border,"  also  by  especially  active  cor- 
porate interests  that  seem  to  control  everything. 

One  of  the  best  informed  men  we  have  met  said  "San 
Francisco  is  not  a  seaport,  it  does  not  lie  upon  or  touch 
the  sea.  Vessels  land  in  another  jurisdiction  and  their 
cargoes  to  and  from  are  carried  across  a  narrow  strip 
of  State  land  between  the  city  and  the  sea,  the  vessels 
paying  toll  for  the  privilege  of  landing  and  lying  op- 
posite San  Francisco  and  it  is  good  luck  that  the  General 
Government  controls  the  navigable  rivers  and  .bays, 
otherAvise  that  privilege  would  be  bartered  or  given 
away.  The  connection  with  sea  commerce,  in  so  far  as 
regulation  or  control,  mainly  consists  in  taxing  vessels 
with  municipal  dues.  It  is  a  fine  scheme,  this  taxing  of 
property  in  another  jurisdiction.  It  beats  the  old  New 
Jersey  taxes  on  the  Camden  and  Amboy  lines  across 
that  State,  which  gave  it  the  name  of  being  a  foreign 
country,  but  it  will  not  work  here  the  same  way.  The 
ship  owners  shift  their  vessels  over  to  some  other  flag 
and  country  for  registry.  Think  of  an  American  line  of 
steamers  sailing  under  the  flag  of  the  Hawaiian  Is- 
lands!" 

This,  and  other  things  said,  led  to  considerable  light 
on  this  great  city?  its  policy,  future  mission  and  present 
status.  It  represents  a  cubic  foot  of  destiny  and  possi- 
bilities crowded  into  a  quart  pot  of  enterprise;  but  I 
must  get  down  to  practical  matters  of  the  present  time. 


NOTES  BY   A   STUDENT.  199 


San  Francisco  is  afflicted  with  a  numerous  population 
not  wanted  elsewhere,  patriotic  people  who  leave  their 
country  for  the  country's  good;  honest,  many  of  them, 
but  of  no  use.  They  come  out  to  this  country  to  "pick 
up  chances."  A  stranger  is  looked  upon  with  distrust. 
The  common  sentiment  is  "What  does  this  fellow  want 
out  here,  unless  he  be  a  'one  lunger'  looking  for  climate? 
What  is  his  game?" 

No  one  can  wonder  at  this  feeling.  It  is  not  born  of 
prejudice  or  of  innate  faculty.  It  is  only  a  reflex  of 
facts.  This  coast  is  the  resort  of  incapable  persons  who 
come  out  here  to  pioneer  among  an  unsophisticated  peo- 
ple as  they  think,  but  as  our  friend  quoted  above  said, 
' '  Lord?  how  they  get  fooled ! ' ' 

My  uncle  has  made  a  preliminary  tour  among  the 
machine  shops  and  his  remarks  explain  pretty  well  what 
was  meant  by  the  phrase  quoted  above. 

"I  have  been  around  the  world  a  great  deal,"  said  he, 
"and  have  seen  all  kinds  of  machine  works  and  other 
factories,  but  never  seen  such  traps  for  an  unsuspecting 
stranger  as  I  have  this  day." 

You  come  across  an  old  tumble-down  shed  suggesting 
an  antiquated  soap  works  and  inside  find  an  equipment, 
practice  and  product  that  is  right  abreast  of  the  times. 

Of  course  one  who  does  not  take  into  account  the  di- 
versity and  nature  of  the  work  done  might  make  a 
mistake,  a  large  one;  but  think  of  twenty  draughtsmen 
in  an  yld  barn  of  a  place  making  high  class  drawings 
of  the  work.  What  is  done  no  one  can  find  out.  It 
would  be  a  great  deal  easier  to  tell  what  is  not  made. 
You  can  go  in  and  order  a  deck  winch  or  a  dredging 
machine,  a  locomotive,  a  line  shaft,  a  mountain  railway 
or  mountings  for  a  farm  gate,  it  is  all  the  same.  As  one 


200  NOTES  BY   A   STUDENT. 

man  said?  "We  make  steamships,  snowplows,  sand 
scrapers,  and  now  and  then  some  picket  fence  to  fill  in 
with."  I  believed  him. 

What  could  an  ordinary  routine  workman  earn  in  a 
place  like  that?  Not  enough  for  files,  waste  and  oil. 

This  aroused  my  interest,  especially  as  my  uncle  said 
he  had  only  been  to  some  of  the  nearest  and  smaller 
works. 

One  thing  is  evident,  that  this  is  the  toughest  case  we 
have  met  with  so  far.  The  city,  its  connections,  possible 
future  and  present  being  are  problems  with  no  answer 
in  sight  at  this  time. 

It  takes  time  to  think  and  more  time  to  derive  even 
vague  inferences.  It  is  a  center  with  natural  lines  of 
trade  reaching  into  Asia,  the  Pacific  Islands,  the  South 
and  Central  American  States  and  to  an  interior  coun- 
try which  is  little  more  than  a  problem  at  this  time, 
filled  with  mines  and  diverse  mineral  products,  timber 
of  a  wonderful  kind,  a  culture  of  the  land  and  products 
that  are  new  to  this  country,  a  population  of  diverse 
nationality,  some  living  on  ten  dollars  and  some  on  ten 
cents  a  day.  One  must  sit  down  and  think  awhile,  per- 
haps a  good  while. 

It  is  the  most  chaotic  of  American  cities,  perhaps  the 
most  chaotic  in  the  world,  if  that  term  is  to  mean  an 
absence  of  purpose,  mixture  of  pursuits,  a  blending  of 
culture  and  the  reverse.  There  is  not  a  thing  one  can 
see  that  has  not  some  local  tinge,  even  down  to  boot- 
blacks who  have  open-sided  kiosks  with  seats  about  four 
feet  high,  the  interior  is  ornamented  with  pictures  and 
the  daily  papers  are  always  at  hand. 

My  uncle  keeps  up  what  the  Scotch  call  a  "deil  of 
thinkin',''  his  analysis  has  received  a  heavy  overload, 


NOTES  BY  A   STUDENT. 


201 


but  he  will  grind  it  out  in  the  end  and  there  will  not 
much  get  out  of  him  until  the  grist  is  ground  and  bolted. 

There  was  a  significant  remark  made  by  him  today. 
"Tech,"  said  he,  "we  had  better  get  out  of  the  hotel; 
this  is  not  a  boarding-house  town  and  we  can  live  inde- 
pendently in  lodgings  the  same  as  in  Europe  and  at  a 
lower  rate." 

This  meant  a  stay  of  some  time  and  it  is  agreeable. 


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